It is the Subcommittee’s judgment that if action is not taken to reduce the environmental impact accompanying the very considerable expansion of shale gas production expected across the country – perhaps as many as 100,000 wells over the next several decades – there is a real risk of serious environmental consequences and a loss of public confidence that could delay or stop this activity.

The consequences to the nation from unrestricted gas fracking could be very serious if multiple actions aren’t taken quickly by energy companies and the government.  That the somewhat surprising conclusion of The Secretary of Energy Advisory Board Subcommittee (SEAB) on Shale Gas Production.

It’s a bit surprising since “six of the seven members have current financial ties to the natural gas and oil industry.”  It just shows how inescapable the dangers are when looked at by serious people.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, pumps water, sand and chemicals underneath shale formations to force out trapped gas. It allows companies to access massive reserves of gas that were formerly unreachable. But drilling operations leak large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and are associated with a host of problems including groundwater contamination and even earthquakes — see Shale Shocked: “Highly Probable” Fracking Caused U.K. Earthquakes, and It’s Linked to Oklahoma Temblors.

And fracking is poised to become commonplace around the country, as the map from the full report (PDF here) makes clear.

The Subcommittee strongly urged EPA and state regulation of fracking emissions — and that those regulations “explicitly include methane, a greenhouse gas.”  In their first report from August, they recommended:

Measures should be taken to reduce emissions of air pollutants, ozone precursors, and methane as quickly as practicable.

Now they write:

Read more

The worst direct impacts to humans from our unsustainable use of energy — over the next few decades — will, I think, be Dust-Bowlification and extreme weather and food insecurity:  Hell and High Water.

But all of the impacts occurring simultaneously will have an even more devastating synergy (see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts“).  It means the rich countries will be far less likely to be offering much assistance to the poorer ones, since there will be ever worsening catastrophes everywhere simultaneously so we’ll be suffering at the same time.  Heck, this deep economic downturn and record-smashing disaster season has already exacerbated media myopia and compassion fatigue to help those around the world staggered by floods and droughts.

And that suggests another deadly climate impact — far more difficult to project quantitatively because there is no paleoclimate analog — may well affect far more people both directly and indirectly: war, conflict, competition for arable and/or habitable land.

We will have to work as hard as possible to make sure we don’t leave a world of wars to our children. That means avoiding decades if not centuries of strife and conflict from catastrophic climate change. That also means finally ending our addiction to oil, a source — if not the source — of two of our biggest recent wars.

Just yesterday, Nobel Peace Prize winner and former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan “said rising temperatures and rainwater shortages are having a devastating effect on food production. Failing to address the problem will have repercussions on health, security and stability.”

The NYT reported in 2009:

Read more

By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Last week the Bureau of Land Management took an initial action towards approving the dramatic expansion of Utah’s only strip coal mine located in the Alton Coal Tract in southwest Utah by releasing a draft environmental impact statement for the project. The Coal Hollow Mine is currently located on 635 acres of private land, but the Alton Coal Development company has applied to expand it onto 2,280 surface acres of public lands and 1,296 acres of private lands for a total of 3,576 acres—a more than 500% increase.

The enlarged mine would be located merely 10 miles from Bryce Canyon National Park. The draft environmental analysis of the coal mine released by BLM last week found that there would be major impacts on both the environment and the community surrounding it. In addition to the release of criteria air pollutants, the increased risk of solid waste spills, and impacts to Bryce Canyon’s famous night skies, the BLM’s draft environmental analysis found that:

There would be an adverse impact to recreation, and adverse impacts to sense of community, social well-being, and tourism-related businesses.

In the press, a BLM official did not play down the adverse impacts of the mine—district planner Keith Rigtrup said “It’s a project with significant impacts.”

Of note is the fact that the BLM did not analyze the effects of mining and burning this coal on global climate change because, it claimed, “existing climate prediction models are not at a scale sufficient to estimate potential impacts of climate change within the analysis area.” In essence, BLM officials declared that the amount of recoverable coal generated by the mine (46 million tons) is insignificant on a global scale, and therefore the agency should not be bothered to analyze its “possible” effects on the climate. The analysis also assumes that “United States demand for coal is expected to increase by approximately 0.4% per year through 2035,” a catastrophic scenario.

A report from the Department of Energy released last week found that global output of carbon dioxide increased by the biggest margin ever recorded last year. As the Associated Press explained, “levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.”

This step in the wrong direction with regard to the Alton coal project is not the Secretary’s first miscalculation with regard to coal development on public lands. In March the Interior Department announced plans to auction off more than 2 billion tons of coal. As ClimateProgress’ Joe Romm said at the time, “This decision certainly eviscerates Salazar’s green street cred.”

The Salt Lake Tribune framed the decision as one that forces Utahns to “debate which kind of economic development is best: heavy industry or tourism.” Bryce Canyon National Park is an economic generator for southwestern Utah, creating 1,628 jobs and $101 million in visitor spending in 2009. Because of the effects of this dirty coal mine on recreation and the national park, the Salt Lake Tribune called the development of the mine “unconscionable” and noted that residents are “right to worry.”

Key Story Below: A tax break that could help get America’s first offshore wind farm up and running has been available for two years. But no one can qualify for it.

Coal Project Hits Snag as a Partner Backs Off

The leading American effort to capture carbon dioxide from coal plants has hit a stumbling block that could imperil the project and set back a promising technology for addressing global warming, people involved in the venture said.

Ameren, the Midwestern power company that was to be the host for the project, has told its partners that because of its financial situation, it cannot take part as promised, although it has not told them exactly what it will do. The company had agreed to supply an old oil-fired power plant in Meredosia, Ill., that would be converted to demonstrate the carbon-capture technology on a commercial scale.

Read more

by Cole Mellino

Industrial agriculture is a major part of the global ponzi scheme. By continuing to fool ourselves into thinking we can infinitely produce more fossil-fuel laden food with limited resources, we’re setting ourselves up for a major catastrophe.

And that fooling happens on every level. Take the disturbing ways in which we create flavors for foods.

The “all natural” label applied to food means absolutely nothing by federal standards. And yet, food companies prey on growing consumer demand for wholesome healthy food by slapping the label on anything they can. The Food and Drug Administration, which is charged with protecting and promoting our health through regulation and oversight of the food industry, has not developed a definition for the “all natural” label. However, “the agency has not objected to the use of the term if the food does not contain added color, artificial flavors, or synthetic substances,” according to the FDA’s website.

People have a false perception that our food industry is well regulated, when it simply is not. To shed some light on what is in our food and what concoctions can even be labeled as “all natural,” Bruce Bradley, a former food marketer at companies like General Mills, Pillsbury, and Nabisco, keeps a blog about the food industry. In 2008, he left the corporate world and decided to devote the rest of his life to promoting healthy food and criticizing the Big Food industry.

Because our food has become so highly processed and because by FDA law, food companies can list spices and flavorings as natural or artificial flavors, unbelievably strange and disgusting things are being added to our food:

• Beaver anal glands, known as castoreum (I guess anal glands was a hard sell), are typically used in vanilla and raspberry flavoring and can legally be labeled natural flavoring
• L-cysteine or cystine is used a dough conditioner. It’s sometimes made from human hair, but more and more from duck feathers and can be found in breads and baked goods.
• A red food coloring additive that goes by many names (Carmine, Crimson Lake, Cochineal, or Natural Red #4) is made from insects like the cochineal beetle.

This is just one more example of how distorted our food system is. To see a longer list of the strange food additives that can be grouped under “natural flavors,” go to Bruce Bradley’s blog.

— Cole Mellino is an intern with the energy team at the Center for American Progress

by Pic Walker

Climate change is the biggest challenge of our lifetime.

At the Alliance for Climate Education, we use the power of awesome—awesome storytelling, awesome visuals, awesome presenters, awesome carbon-cutting projects—to inspire youth to take action on climate change while building habits for a lifetime and creating the will to change. Doom and gloom scenarios don’t inspire everyone, especially the younger generation.  Accordingly, ACE strives to inject fun and excitement around everything we do, to make beating climate change, gulp, awesome.

This week, we’re celebrating reaching 1,000,000 high school students nationwide with our award-winning assembly on climate science and solutions. It’s an awesome accompishment for an organization that has been around less than 3 years.  Best of all, our assembly works—it contributes to a 58% improvement in climate science understanding, according to 2010 survey with Chicago Public Schools, and 97% of teachers rate the ACE experience better than other high school assembly programs.

Take a look at our short assembly trailer to see how the power of awesome has helped ACE become the national leader in climate science education.
Read more