A conservative religious organization with ties to the oil industry is lashing out at health-conscious evangelical leaders for supporting new federal rules on mercury.  They assert that protection of the unborn from toxic pollution cannot be called pro-life because the term does not mean “quality of life.”

The Cornwall Alliance is a group of conservative evangelicals devoted to spreading disinformation about climate change through its mission of  “free-market environmental stewardship.” In its Declaration on Global Warming, the organization says “we deny that carbon dioxide … is a pollutant” and that “we deny that alternative, renewable fuels can … replace fossil and nuclear fuels.”

Think Progress conducted a lengthy investigation of this pollution-pushing evangelical group in 2010.

Responding to a new video and radio ad campaign from the Evangelical Environment Network that encourages lawmakers to support new mercury standards in order to “protect the unborn,” the Cornwall Alliance issued a statement explaining its view that being pro-life does not denote “quality of life.”

The term pro-life originated historically in the struggle to end abortion on demand and continues to be used in public discourse overwhelmingly in that sense. To ignore that is at best sloppy communication and at worst intentional deception. The life in pro-life denotes not quality of life but life itself. The term denotes opposition to a procedure that intentionally results in dead babies. (Bold not our emphasis.)

This doesn’t mean we should ignore environmental risks. It does mean they should not be portrayed as pro-life. Genuinely pro-life people will usually desire to reduce other risks as well—guided by cost/benefit analysis. But to call those issues “pro-life” is to obscure the meaning of the term.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the new mercury rules will prevent 11,000 premature deaths and 130,000 asthma attacks each year. And the impact of high levels of mercury in unborn children are well documented:

For fetuses, infants, and children, the primary health effect of methylmercury is impaired neurological development. Impacts on cognitive thinking, memory, attention, language, and fine motor and visual spatial skills have been seen in children exposed to methylmercury in the womb.

Outbreaks of methylmercury poisonings have made it clear that adults, children, and developing fetuses are at risk from ingestion exposure to methylmercury. During these poisoning outbreaks some mothers with no symptoms of nervous system damage gave birth to infants with severe disabilities, it became clear that the developing nervous system of the fetus may be more vulnerable to methylmercury than is the adult nervous system.

A growing number of religious leaders — including the U.S. Conference of Bishops — has come out in favor of reducing mercury emissions because of their impact on the health of children.

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Whole systems design isn’t about solving one problem. It’s about shifting the underlying strategy and culture to create competitive pressure, emulation, and durable change.

by Alexis Karolides, cross-posted from the Rocky Mountain Institute

Which commercial building sector uses more energy per square foot than all but one other and is more than twice as energy-intensive as office buildings and schools? Grocery stores, second only to food service.

With utility costs rising—and already a significant percentage of the famously thin profit margin on food sales—stores must get serious about energy efficiency, particularly if they care to keep prices low for value-conscious customers.

Now, imagine slashing the energy use of a new or existing store in half, while achieving a better customer environment. How could this be done? Rocky Mountain Institute’s whole-system approach, reaping multiple benefits from single design moves, works particularly well when a retailer is willing to push the boundaries.

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New approaches are needed to ensure China’s technology ambitions don’t erode U.S. competitiveness in clean energy.

by Melanie Hart

The U.S. Department of Commerce next month is expected to issue a critical ruling on one of the biggest trade cases to hit the U.S.-China energy relationship in recent years. Seven U.S. solar companies claim that the Chinese government unfairly subsidizes Chinese solar panel manufacturers to enable those companies to sell their products at below-market prices and drive U.S. competitors out of the market. The seven companies support subsidy and dumping petitions filed by SolarWorld Industries America Inc. against Chinese solar imports in October that ask the Commerce Department to levy triple-digit tariffs on solar cells and modules imported from China.

This case highlights a major challenge facing U.S.-China clean energy relationships more broadly: how to handle the Chinese government’s deployment of massive resources toward developing renewable energy technologies, many of which are designed for export. Indeed, this is an issue that bedevils U.S.-China trade relations not just in clean energy, but also in other industrial and services sectors, which means that how this complaint by U.S. solar manufacturers plays out may well have much broader implications.

One of the biggest challenges facing renewable energy in the United States is that traditional fossil fuels are cheaper here than they are in almost any other developed country. This is primarily due to the large supply of fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas in our nation, as well as a long history of federal government subsidies for developing those energy sources. The United States has also failed to put a carbon price on fossil fuels, so U.S. fossil-fuel prices do not include the environmental and public-health damage from greenhouse-gas pollution. Relatively low fossil-fuel prices make it particularly hard for renewable energy to compete against conventional energy in the U.S. market.

Nonetheless, over the past decade U.S. companies have gotten much better at manufacturing, deploying, and operating renewable energy technologies, and as a result prices are coming down rapidly. As prices decrease renewable energy gains market share and speeds our transition toward a more sustainable energy economy.

The problem is China is particularly good at making things cheaply. At the lower end of the value chain, that is primarily due to the country’s low labor costs and massive supply chains. Also advantageous are China’s lax labor, safety, health, and environmental standards. At the higher end, that is often because the Chinese government provides generous subsidies and other forms of support for high-technology research, development, and commercialization. Low-cost Chinese manufacturing plays a large role in driving prices down for a wide range of products, including renewable energy technologies. Chinese manufacturing also plays a large role in pricing some U.S. manufacturers out of business, with many of those manufacturers claiming that the “China price” is driven by Chinese government intervention rather than natural market forces. If the Chinese government is intervening in a way that breaks trade rules then that type of rule breaking should be remedied in some way.

Determining whether China is playing by the rules requires taking a close look at their renewable energy policies—not only at the national level but also at the provincial and local levels.

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

Today the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on two Republican bills that would give one of the world’s largest copper deposits away to the Resolution Copper Company, owned by the large multi-national mining conglomerates Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton. The deposit is located on public lands in the Tonto National Forest in Arizona.

Sens. John Kyl (R-AZ) and John McCain (R-AZ) are the biggest proponents of the bills in the Senate. Kyl testified today that

The legislation that came over to the Senate from the House is perfectly good legislation, it has all of the protections in it, and it has Congress making the decision.

Under the bill, the Resolution Copper Company would receive more than 2,000 acres of land with the copper deposit in exchange for approximately 5,000 acres of land that the company currently owns which would be set aside for conservation. The Resolution Copper Company plans to mine the copper deposit as soon as the transfer is complete.

The House version of this bill (H.R. 1904), which was debated today, would prohibit environmental review from taking place until after the land exchange had occurred. So, the extent of the environmental impacts would not be determined until after the land is made private, thereby limiting the ability of surrounding communities to work to stop or modify the mine should major problems be predicted.

Additionally, American taxpayers would not be properly compensated for the value of the copper that would come off of these lands when the area is made private in the land exchange. Instead, a single multinational corporation would benefit from one of the largest copper deposits in the world — a true example of giving away our public lands for corporate profits.

Finally, the Resolution Copper mine would be built on Oak Flat, a site that is sacred to Native American tribes. As Shan Lewis, president of the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona testified today:

Federal laws and policies are designed to protect Native sacred sites like Oak Flat.  The proposed land exchange that would be mandated by H.R. 1904 would circumvent these laws and policies and transfer ownership to of federal lands containing a sacred site of Apache, Yavapai, and other Native people to a company for mining activities that will destroy this sacred site.  Although ITCA is not opposed to mining in general, mining in this location that will result in the destruction of a sacred site is offensive to us and should not be condoned.

In past sessions of Congress, both McCain and Kyl have held up other Senate bills and nominations in order to try to move previous versions of the Resolution Copper bill.

The UK renewable energy company Ecotricity just released an amusing video ad as part of its Dump the Big Six social media campaign designed to get Europeans to ditch the “big six” traditional power providers for Ecotricity’s services.

Ecotricity calls itself the “world’s first green electricity company” devoted exclusively to procuring and selling renewable electrons. The company is also developing projects to support biogas and displace the use of natural gas.

I love the ad. But I’m a bit confused as to how this will make people want to move away from coal and nuclear?  I have to say, those tea-drinking cooling towers are kind of cute….

From the beginning of the Keystone XL pipeline controversy, activists and congressional Democrats questioned the neutrality of the State Department’s part. Since the Bush administration, the process has been largely influenced by TransCanada interests. The review was outsourced to a contractor paid-for by the Canadian company behind the pipeline, and its lobbyists had close ties to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

These serious concerns led to an investigation by the State Department Inspector General. The findings, released today, note that the department violated no laws and showed no evidence of conflict of interest:

“The department followed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s third party contracting process, from reviewing, editing and approving the draft request for proposal to independently reviewing proposals and selecting a contractor,” the report said.

The company “has also received a minimal amount of contract work on two corporate projects that Cardno Entrix has been associated with for many years but that were bought by TransCanada in 2007 and 2008,” the IG report said. But “these relationships did not present a conflict of interest because they are not directly related to the Keystone XL project and are either federally controlled relationships or minimal financial relationships” that don’t impact the contractor’s objectivity, the probe found.

TransCanada is still trying to influence the political process by other means. The Canadian company ramped up political pressure in the last three months of 2011 by spending $400,000 on lobbying. Pro-pipeline money flooded Washington, coinciding with the House GOP’s increased interest in trying to force approval. A ThinkProgress Green analysis found that pipeline backers overwhelmed the debate at the close of 2011, with $36.7 million lobbying in favor compared to just $1.1 million against.

Joe Nocera is a business columnist for the NY Times.  He understands business, including some aspects of the energy business  (see Nocera on “The Phony Solyndra Scandal”: The “Real Winner is … the Chinese Solar Industry”).

But his Monday NYT article on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline reveals the myopia on climate that is characteristic of most business and economics reporters.  He simply asserts the tar sands “is hardly the environmental disaster many suppose,” while providing no evidence.

And Nocera asserts, “Environmental concerns notwithstanding, America will be using oil — and lots of it — for the foreseeable future,” which is true in a hand-waving sense:  If we ignore environmental concerns, we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing.  Whether humanity can withstand such self-destructive activity, however, is the real issue.

Ultimately Nocera writes:

As it turns out, the environmental movement doesn’t just want to shut down Keystone.  Its real goal, as I discovered when I spoke recently to Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, is much bigger.  “The effort to stop Keystone is part of a broader effort to stop the expansion of the tar sands,” Brune said.  “It is based on choking off the ability to find markets for tar sands oil.”

This is a ludicrous goal.

In fact, it isn’t a ludicrous goal.  As the nation’s top climatologist, NASA’s James Hansen said back in June,  “Exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts.”

If Nocera wants to take on Brune’s position, then he is going to have to actually discuss climate change, which he fails to do at all in this article.  So far, it seems as if Nocera’s views on global warming derive from reading the likes of the widely debunked physicist Freeman Dyson and attending Exxon-Mobil shareholder meetings, which causes him to dismissing knowledgeable people who express science-based views of as trying to “push Exxon Mobil toward their belief system — their global warming religion.”

That equation of science with religion puts him him the climate ignorati.

If Nocera wants to become informed on climate science, I’d suggest that he start talking to actual climate scientists, folks like Hansen (who is conveniently located in New York).  He might also call up Lonnie Thompson who can explain why climatologists are speaking out: “Virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization.”

Nocera could also review the recent scientific literature, which  I have summarized here: “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces.”

One final note.   What is particularly ironic about Nocera being suckered by the “Big Lie” of the climate deniers is that he described how the Big Lie works in a different instance with uncanny accuracy  in a column titled, “The Big Lie“:

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Despite thousands of safety and environmental violations on public lands, oil and gas companies have been virtually unpunished, due to lax oversight and enforcement. A new report from House Democrats on the Natural Resources Committee finds that the Interior Department collected fines from a mere six percent of violations over the last 13 years. Now, House Democrats will deliver these findings to the Interior Department:

“It would be an overstatement to even call these fines a slap on the wrist. For oil and gas companies making billions from drilling on America’s public lands, this kind of inadequate oversight and enforcement is little more than a pin prick,” said Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey, the committee’s top Democrat …

“American citizens and workers should feel confident that oil and gas companies are conducting business in the safest manner possible, and when they don’t, that the U.S. government will step in and make sure they pay the price for their actions. This report indicates that confidence in the oversight of drilling on public lands should be limited, at best,” Markey said.

The report looked at 2,025 federal land drilling violations in 17 states, where 271 companies escaped any fees. Considering big oil made more than $137 billion in just 2011, the $275,000 in total fines amounts to pennies for the rich industry.

Saving lives, encouraging clean generation, and creating new jobs are not enough for opponents of new mercury rules.

by Daniel J. Weiss and Zachary Rybarczyk

Yesterday’s House Subcommittee on Energy and Power meeting could more closely resemble a kangaroo court than real government oversight.

Here’s why. The subcommittee plans a hearing misleadingly titled “What EPA’s Utility MACT Rule Will Cost U.S. Consumers.” But the Republican majority is playing with words and the health of our children. Its witnesses from industry and their consulting firms suggest that the Republican majority has little interest in learning about the tens of billions of dollars of economic gains due to health benefits derived by the slashing millions of pounds of mercury, lead, arsenic, and other toxic air pollution from power plants that the rule would generate. And the subcommittee majority will pay little heed to the Environmental Protection Agency’s analysis that found the rules will only lead to modest electricity price increases, which are relatively small compared to the electricity price increases experienced over the past decade.

In addition, the majority will likely ignore the independent analysis and data that suggest that retrofitting power plants to cut toxic pollution will cost less than predicted by industry-funded studies. Instead, witnesses are likely to repeat findings from utility-and-coal-industry-financed reports that have already been debunked due to their flawed analysis.

Below we offer information on how the rules will affect U.S. ratepayers as well as the benefits that they will provide to all Americans.

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Our guest blogger is Ed Dolan, an economist and author of TANSTAAFL (There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch), a book that outlines the libertarian case for a cleaner environment.

I am usually a big fan of Joe Nocera, whether he is skewering Wall Street crooks or exposing the high-handed behavior of the NCAA, but he is all wrong about the Keystone XL pipeline. He claims that Obama, in his “centrist heart of hearts,” also favors KXL. If so, the President is wrong, too.

The first problem is that Nocera, like other pipeline proponents, frames the decision on KXL in isolation. Doing so leads to the following seductive line of reasoning: The United States needs a lot of oil now and for the foreseeable future. If we don’t get the oil from Canada, we will get it from other sources, like Venezuelan oil sands or Nigeria’s polluted delta, that are just as dirty. Therefore, we might as well buy our oil from our friends to the North.

But who says we have to use so much oil? Other countries do not. The United States has the highest oil consumption of any one of the advanced economies that make up the OECD. Why? Primarily because we have the lowest energy taxes and the cheapest oil prices. Low oil prices feed into an endless list of decisions we make. How far from work will we live? Is it worth buying an electric car, even with subsidies, when gas is so cheap? If we build a high-speed rail line, will enough people ride it when it costs so little to drive?

In case you think prices don’t matter, take a look at this chart, courtesy of Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute. The United States is the little diamond in the extreme upper-left-hand corner: Lowest oil prices, highest oil consumption.

Once the question is reframed — not as “KXL yes or no,” but as “what kind of an energy policy should we have” — the pipeline starts to look a lot less attractive. If we get the country on a downward trajectory of energy use, we can start to pick and choose which fuels to take. We don’t have to use the dirtiest ones just because they are the closest to hand.
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Perhaps a bit flustered from losing three primary races a day earlier to fellow GOP presidential contender Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney got his energy talking points confused at a campaign rally in Atlanta, Georgia on Wednesday.

Speaking about his plan to encourage domestic energy production, Romney got the solar company Solyndra and the Keystone tar sands pipeline mixed up:

“My course for America is to become energy secure and to open up that Solyndra – that, that pipeline, excuse me, the Keystone pipeline,” Romney told about 400 supporters at a stone importing company in northern Atlanta. “Not Solyndra. … The Keystone pipeline to get energy here in this country.”

The small stumble could have been a good opportunity for Romney to throw some support behind solar as an important domestic energy source. After all, the industry was the “fastest growing in America” for two years in a row, supports more than 100,000 direct and indirect jobs in all 50 states, and accounted for a $1.9 billion trade surplus in 2010.

Instead, Romney quickly fell back to his talking points and called federal loan guarantees an example of “crony capitalism.”

The Solyndra slip up is not the first for a Republican presidential candidate. Last December, Texas Governor and former candidate Rick Perry thought Solyndra (which he called “Solynda”) was a country that America gave money to.

 

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?

Pennsylvania passed a bill along party lines to rewrite state laws governing natural gas drilling. The state’s House Democrats heavily criticized the bill for setting drilling fees too low compared to other states. [WSJ]

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine (R) called for increased sanctions on polluters and requiring disclosure of chemicals in drilling. The increased fines would bring Ohio in line with Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Texas. [Lancaster Eagle Gazette]

BP is negotiating with U.S. officials to settle pollution claims over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill that may leave the company liable for as much as $17.6 billion in fines, a person familiar with the talks said. [Business Week]

The Sierra Club is asking President Obama to ensure any settlement of the government’s case against responsible parties for the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico include financing for Gulf Coast coastal restoration efforts. [NOLA]

For the first time in over three decades, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to decide to grant a license to build a nuclear reactor — a milestone for an industry whose long-hoped-for renaissance is smaller and later than anticipated. [NYT]

A pro-fracking movie FrackNation has raised $22,000 in two days on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter. The effort follows on the heels of the popular Oscar-nominated Gasland documentary on the dangers of fracking. [LA Times]

Two U.S. startup companies broke records in solar efficient panels – posting record efficiency rates in the past few days of 23.5 percent. [VatorNews]

And finally, Mitt Romney made a slip-up at a campaign event Wednesday afternoon, mixing up Solyndra and Keystone XL when attacking President Obama: “My course for America is to become energy secure and to open up that Solyndra – that, that pipeline, excuse me, the Keystone pipeline.” [Washington Post]

Other stories below: Solar power to pay Nevada city’s debt; Bank of England says to evaluate fossil-fuel investment risk

A new study confirms we are on track for significant sea level rise this century

Global warming: CU-led study pinpoints Earth’s ice loss

Earth’s glaciers and ice caps outside of the regions of Greenland and Antarctica are shedding about 150 billion tons of ice annually, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.

The total mass ice loss from Greenland, Antarctica and all Earth’s glaciers and ice caps between 2003 to 2010 was 1,000 cubic miles, about eight times the water volume of Lake Erie.

“The total amount of ice lost to Earth’s oceans from 2003 to 2010 would cover the entire United States in about 1 and one-half feet of water,” said CU-Boulder physics Professor John Wahr, who helped lead the study….

The measurements are important because the melting of the world’s glaciers and ice caps, along with Greenland and Antarctica, pose the greatest threat to sea level increases in the future, Wahr said.

The researchers used satellite measurements from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) to calculate that the world’s glaciers and ice caps lost about 148 billion tons, or about 39 cubic miles of ice annually from 2003 to 2010. The total does not count the mass from individual glacier and ice caps on the fringes of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which could add up to an additional 80 billion tons.

“This is the first time anyone has looked at all of the mass loss from all of Earth’s glaciers and ice caps with GRACE,” said Wahr. “The Earth is losing an incredible amount of ice to the oceans annually, and these new results will help us answer important questions in terms of both sea rise and how the planet’s cold regions are responding to global change.”

… According to the GRACE data, total sea level rise from all land-based ice on Earth including Greenland and Antarctica was roughly 1.5 millimeters per year annually or about 12 millimeters, or one-half inch, from 2003 to 2010, said Wahr. The sea rise amount does include the expansion of water due to warming, which is the second key sea-rise component and is roughly equal to melt totals, he said.

JR:  I checked with JPL’s Eric Rignot, who called the study “a solid confirmation” of his 2011 paper, which I wrote about here:  “JPL bombshell: Polar ice sheet mass loss is speeding up, on pace for 1 foot sea level rise by 2050.”

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