Annie Lowrey reports that “[t]he average new car weighed 3,221 pounds in 1987 but 4,009 pounds in 2010″ with bad results for the safety of the country. She cites research from Maximilian Auffhammer and Michael Anderson at UC Berkeley and concludes that when you control for own-vehicle weight, “being hit by a vehicle that is 1,000 pounds heavier results in a 47 percent increase” in the probability of dying and that it gets even worse with SUVs and pickups.
To me, this is one of the more frustrating elements of the conversation around electric cars and other miracle approaches to reducing gasoline consumption. The reality is that cars have gotten more fuel efficient on average despite getting a lot bigger. If stringent fuel economy standards or — much better — drastically higher gas taxes were imposed, the first-order response would be to start pushing car weights back down. After all, European auto fleets are much less gas-intensive than American ones not because of miracle alternatives to the internal combustion engine but simply because their cars are smaller. Some people need big cars some of the time, of course, but mostly people are just driving to work and so forth in a mostly empty car. And at a lower car size equilibrium, drivers would be both safer on average and less of a deadly threat to cyclists and pedestrians. It would also be easier for innovators to put tolerably safe electric cars (or autonomous robot cars) together if they didn’t need to share the road with as many giant vehicles.
New Ad Challenges Paul Ryan’s Dirty Oil Ties |
Today, the League of Conservation Voters launched a new television ad using ThinkProgress video in Wisconsin’s 1st District calling out Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) for his recently exposed conflict of interest for defending oil subsidies while his family receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from oil company payouts:
“Congressman Ryan should stop asking Wisconsin taxpayers to continue funding massive government handouts to the most profitable oil companies,” said Navin Nayak, LCV senior vice president of campaigns, “especially when his family stands to benefit from some of those same companies’ earnings.”
NASA’s James Hansen is our leading climatologist and a modern day Paul Revere, if anyone were listening. He has been right longer about the dangers of unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases than almost anybody (see “1981 Hansen study finds warming trend that could raise sea levels“).
So it’s no surprise that organizations around the world have given him prestigious awards — that include a substantial amount of money — which he is legally allowed to receive as a government employee. It’s also no surprise that the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies is the subject of lawsuits and smears by the fossil-fuel-funded anti-science deniers who want unrestricted pollution, whose efforts, if successful, would doom billions to a ruined climate.
Before discussing Horner’s disingenuous and self-contradictory attack, let me reprint a couple of statements by Hansen on the general subject of this sort of harassment (since I’m sure NASA’s attorney has asked that he not comment publicly on this lawsuit). Back in December 2009 Hansen explained the harassment strategy of the deniers here:
“I am now inundated with broad FOIA requests for my correspondence, with substantial impact on my time and on others in my office. I believe these to be fishing expeditions, aimed at finding some statement(s), likely to be taken out of context, which they would attempt to use to discredit climate science…. The input data for global temperature analyses are widely available, on our web site and elsewhere. If those input data could be made to yield a significantly different global temperature change, contrarians would certainly have done that — but they have not.”
More recently, in his open letter to the Prime Minister of New Zealand, he had this sardonic footnote to the deniers that harass him with e-mails:
It’s an important reminder that, for all the problems of the present moment, this is, in many ways, the best of times for the world when you take a global and historical perspective.
But you can also see right here why we’re watching some unprecedented ecological crises unfold on the planet. The human species isn’t new and people have been altering the natural environment for a long time, but there are many more people alive currently than has traditionally been the case and the scale of present-day economic activity blows everything in the historical record out of the water.
[Hmm. Perhaps there is also a boomlet in green-washing jobs.]
Anywhere, the NYT story itself is pretty good, pointing out “a new wave of recent college graduates entering a career field that, like blogging and social media strategy, hardly existed a decade ago: environmental sustainability.” As the piece explains:
Child reading donated books at Lafayette House shelter, Joplin, MO
Missouri is still reeling from the aftermath of catastrophic flooding and the single deadliest tornado in 60 years. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (D-MO) has pledged $50 million to help the disaster area. Unfortunately, Nixon paid for the disaster relief by cutting both education funding and grants supporting domestic violence programs — such as those that support abused women and children made homeless in Joplin:
Missouri’s budget had set aside $1 million for disaster aid, but Gov. Jay Nixon quickly pledged $50 million for the Joplin tornado and southeast Missouri flooding, offsetting that with cuts to other government programs. The biggest chunk came from higher education, which already was slated for a 5.5 percent cut in the coming school year. Nixon deepened that cut to 7 or 8 percent, depending on the institution, and also reduced the amount of money lawmakers had budgeted for scholarships.
For the University of Missouri’s four-campus system, that means its state aid for the 2011-2012 school year will be 11 percent lower than in 2001, despite an enrollment increase of 39 percent during the past decade.
Eric Woods, student president of the Columbia campus, acknowledged the need for disaster assistance, but bemoaned that students now have to shoulder the burden for Missouri’s “crummy luck” with disasters. “I think when you’re making a state choose between rebuilding after several natural disasters or funding their schools, there’s something not quite right about it,” said Woods, a senior majoring in political science, history and religious studies.
Among other things, Nixon also trimmed the budget for domestic violence grants by 15 percent, essentially continuing a cut from the previous year. That comes as the number of abused women and children seeking shelter at the Lafayette House in Joplin has more than doubled since the May 22 tornado, said Louise Secker, the organizations’ director of community services.
As the state rebuilds from its record disasters, recovery assistance is necessary and important. Yet Republican leaders such as Mitt Romney and Eric Cantor have said it is immoral and unacceptable to offer disaster assistance without other spending cuts, because “we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids.”
Nixon’s choice to pay for tornado and flood assistance with funds for schools and abused mothers and children is just the latest example of how state budgets have declared war on the most vulnerable.
Charles Koch, Exxon, Southern Company Fund Mercury Denier Willie Soon |
Dr. Willie Soon, an astrophysicist with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, argued in the Wall Street Journal last month that the risk to babies and children of mercury exposure from coal-fired power plants is a “myth.” Identified by the Journal only as a “natural scientist from Harvard,” an investigation by Greenpeace reveals that Soon has received at least $120,000 from coal-fired utility Southern Company, $65,000 from Charles Koch, and $131,000 from Exxon Mobil since 2007.
Frasure Creek Mining mountaintop removal near Brushy Fork, KY
Two coal companies accused of polluting streams in eastern Kentucky continued to pollute streams at higher levels than their permits allowed even after reaching an agreement with the state to stop. In October, environmental groups filed notice to sue International Coal Group (ICG) and Frasure Creek Mining over the pollution of streams. After meetings with state officials, the companies agreed to correct the issue and pay $650,000 in fines.
But according to a new suit filed by the environmental groups, the companies not only failed to stop polluting, they are actually polluting at even higher levels than they were before the agreement. According to the suit, “almost every reported pollutant in the permits analyzed had multiple violations at significant factors above what is considered safe for waterways of Kentucky and the people who use and enjoy those waterways”:
Lisenby’s and Chance’s affidavits allege a review of the companies’ DMRs showed the companies “self-reported” pollution levels as much as eight to 15 times above allowable, permitted levels of several pollutants.
Kentucky politicians are fighting the federal government’s efforts to regulate coal pollution, with dire consequences for its citizens. According to a recent study by professors at West Virginia and Washington State universities, mountaintop removal has a direct link to the prevalence of birth defects in the communities where it is practiced.
Pawlenty Denies Global Warming: ‘The Science Is Bad’ |
Appearing on Fox & Friends this morning, Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty claimed that “the science is bad” on manmade climate change, then saying “the reality is the science indicates most of it, if not all of it, is caused by natural causes.” He “denounced” his former support for efforts to combat this threat to human civilization. Watch it:
Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had to dismiss a case brought by Katrina victims against the energy industry because so many judges were required to recuse themselves that there weren’t enough judges left to hear an appeal. More recently, two Fifth Circuit judges, Jerry Smith and Eugene Davis, ruled in favor of the oil industry in a major drilling moratorium case, despite the fact that they both attended expense-paid “junkets for judges” sponsored by an oil-industry funded organization. As of last year, a majority of the court’s active judges had oil investments, even though their court is frequently called upon to resolve questions involving the oil industry.
And yet, one year after their oily conflicts of interest became so severe that the court was unable to hear a major case, only one judge has divested from oil:
The new reports show that only one judge who formerly had stocks in an oil and gas company is now free from any association with the industry.
That is Judge Catharina Haynes, an appointee of President George W. Bush who previously held up to $15,000 in BP PLC stock but sold several weeks after the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig began the Gulf spill. BP was the owner of the leaking oil well. [...]
“It seems to me that someone who is a federal judge has some responsibility to avoid holding onto financial assets that will compromise his or her ability to do the job,” said Arthur Hellman, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.
Owning energy stocks while sitting on the 5th Circuit “has that effect because they are so many of those cases,” he added.
Sadly, this is not the only example of Fifth Circuit judges placing their corporate connections above ethical concerns. Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Clement actually serves on the junkets for judges organization’s board, despite an opinion from the federal judiciary’s ethics committee saying that Clement violates her ethical obligations by doing so.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) is calling for flood management officials to recognize the role of global warming in creating more dangerous disasters. Yesterday, as the federal government agreed to assume most of the costs of the Missouri River flood in the state of Iowa, Harkin told reporters that U.S. Army Corps of Engineers needs to take into account the “indisputable” climate change that has been increasing precipitation intensity in the Midwest. The Master Water Control Manual of the Missouri River Basin ignores the existence of manmade global warming, and left the corps unprepared for the scope of this year’s record precipitation. Harkin told the Quad City Times that climate change is “indisputable“:
I think it’s indisputable that something is happening to our climate. Perhaps the basis of that manual needs to be revised for climate change that’s happening and the amount of snowpack.
Speaking before television reporters on Monday afternoon, as President Obama signed a federal disaster declaration for the region, Harkin reiterated that the flooding disaster could have been managed if not for the global warming caused by fossil fuel pollution:
If we hadn’t had those big rainfalls, their plans would have worked. That’s why I say we have to maybe go back and revise that master plan simply because something is happening with our climate. and we’re getting more rain and more snowpack in areas that we’ve never had before.
Watch it:
The corps manual does not mention the implications of climate change for the river basin, despite years of relevant scientific publications and government reports. As climate change accelerates, the challenge of handling the greater droughts and floods in our future will only increase. Our national flood-control system is grossly unprepared for what is coming, even if immediate action is taken to eliminate climate pollution.
However, the manual does note the critical role that the National Weather Service and the U.S. Geological Survey play in providing meteorological and stream flow observations and forecasts. The budgets of both agencies — and their ability to study climate change — are under attack by Tea Party Republicans along the Missouri River like Rep. Steve King (R-IA).
Google, a leader of innovation in the digital economy, says that without a private and public focus on innovation in renewables, storage and electric vehicles, the cost of delaying the clean energy economy could be in the trillions of dollars to the U.S.
Google released an analysis of the economic impact of clean energy innovation today, modeling a variety of long-term scenarios and their influence on GDP growth, a reduction in energy costs and greenhouse gas reductions. They used McKinsey’s Low Carbon Economics Tool, which provides models to assess the macroeconomic impact of climate and energy policies.
Based on our modeling, we estimate that by 2030, innovation in the modeled technologies alone could have a transformative impact on the US, adding over $155 billion per year in GDP and 1.1 million net jobs, while reducing household energy costs by $942 per year, oil consumption by 1.1 billion barrels per year, and GHG emissions by 13% relative to BAU. By 2050, annual gains in GDP increase to $600 billion, net additional jobs to 3.9 million, and emissions reductions to 55%.
A growing number of people are investing in small electricity generating wind turbines for residential use, despite the bad economy, and backers of wind power say they expect advances in technology and manufacturing to make them even more popular.
Cycling isn’t just good for your personal health, it’s also good for economic health. A new report by the University of Massachusetts Political Economy Research Institute finds that cycling projects create 11.4 jobs for every $1 million invested — 46% more the 7.8 jobs than car-only road projects.
[E]conomic benefits include tourism and recreation-related spending (which is a boon to businesses and increases local tax revenues), and a rise in real estate values. Other benefits include higher quality of life, environmental benefits such as buffer zones to protect water sources from pollution run-off, and mitigation of flood damage. A 2008 user survey of a multi-use trail in Pennsylvania showed that over 80 percent of users purchased “hard goods” such as bikes and cycling equipment in relation to their use of the trail, and some also pur- chase “soft goods” such as drinks and snacks at nearby establishments.
The trend is similar to what we see at farmer’s markets, where people have many times the number of interactions than they do at the grocery store (all while supporting local businesses). When cyclists move through properly-designed infrastructure for bikes, they’re more likely to interact with their surroundings and spend more money. Here’s an example from North Carolina:
By Climate Guest Blogger on Jun 28, 2011 at 9:02 am
by Bracken Hendricks and Lisbeth Kaufman
Last week the New York State Senate passed the nation’s first energy efficiency law that will make it easy and affordable for middle and low income residents to retrofit their homes and truly scale efficiency. The act has the potential to become a model for the rest of the country to finance energy efficiency retrofits and reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions.
The law is particularly important because in New York the majority of residents, namely moderate and middle-income homeowners, cannot afford to pay the large upfront costs of retrofitting their homes. As a result, they can’t benefit from government rebate programs or from the savings of reduced energy use. New York has some of the highest electricity prices in the country, meaning that citizens are suffering from overly burdensome energy bills, and thus sinking money into electricity instead of back into the economy were it would be two to three times more effective.
The Power NY Act (S.5844), sponsored by Republican Senator George Maziarz (R-C, Newfane) addresses this gap in retrofit financing. It establishes a public-private partnership to provide low-cost loans for New Yorkers who cannot afford efficiency retrofits on their homes. New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) will pool money from private investors and lend homeowners small low-cost loans up to $13,000 for residences and $26,000 for businesses. Homeowners repay the loans over time as a line item on their utility bill. Hence the name for this mechanism: on-bill financing, or on-bill recovery.
This financing structure is particularly smart because home-owners rarely default on energy bills. Looping the loan repayment into the energy bill means that the loans will be a reasonably safe investment.
With some of the country’s oldest and leakiest houses, the lack of retrofits is taking a major economic and environmental toll on the state. New York’s buildings account for 60% of the state’s carbon emissions, much higher than the national average of 40%. Efficiency retrofits can make a major impact on the state’s carbon emissions and pollution levels.
Welcome to Clean Start, ThinkProgress Green’s morning round-up of the latest in climate and clean energy. Here is what we’re reading. What are you?
Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R-ND) is asking President Obama for the federal government to pick up 90 percent of the cost of Missouri River flooding in his state. [Jamestown Sun]
“The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will examine ongoing efforts to quantify the natural resources damages resulting from last year’s massive BP oil spill, which dumped 4.9 million barrels into the Gulf of Mexico.” [E2]
“A growing number of people are investing in small electricity generating wind turbines for residential use, despite the bad economy, and backers of wind power say they expect advances in technology and manufacturing to make them even more popular.” [USA Today]
Pajamas Media “is suing the Defense Department in an effort to gain access to the travel records of U.S. officials who went to Copenhagen in 2009 to attend international climate talks.” [E2]
The tornadoes and floods that pummeled much of the South and Midwest also have dealt a serious blow to struggling state budgets, potentially forcing new cuts to education and other services to offset hundreds of millions of dollars in disaster aid. [AP]
According a Greenpeace report, the German carmaker Volkswagen “puts its most efficient engines in only 6 per cent of its cars and inflates their price by more than their cost, deterring the wider adoption of greener motoring.” [Price of Oil]
Alstom, a French global engineering firm very active in nuclear, has been expanding into the renewables space through both internal projects and acquisitions. This week the company said it was purchasing a 40% stake in the Scottish wave developer AWS Ocean Energy, bringing some industrial strength to a sector in dire need of capital and technical help.
Alstom has already been working to develop a 1 MW hydrokinetic tidal turbine (pictured right) with Clean Current in France. The latest investment gives the company access to AWS’ R&D work on a 2.5 MW wave converter.
On the surface, this is a positive story about an industrial heavyweight getting into a promising renewable energy sector. But it says as much about problems in the wave energy sector as it does about the immense potential of the resource.
Edited by Joe Romm, we cover climate science, solutions and politics. Columnist Tom Friedman calls us "the indispensable blog" and Time magazine named us one of the 25 "Best Blogs of 2010." Newcomers, start here.
Joe Romm has pulled together the secrets of the greatest communicators in history to show how you can apply these tools to your writing, speaking, blogging — even your Tweeting.
Cycling isn’t just good for your personal health, it’s also good for economic health. A new 
by Bracken Hendricks and Lisbeth Kaufman
Alstom, a French global engineering firm very active in nuclear, has been 
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
