Photo Credit: Aaron Fishman

by Glenn Hurowitz

The Obama administration is poised to make one of the biggest climate policy decisions of its entire administration – and it’s not about coal, oil, or gas, but rainforests.  EPA is deciding whether or not palm oil should be included in the Renewable Fuel Standard, which mandates that American motorists use 36 billion gallons of biofuel in their cars and trucks by 2022. In order to qualify for inclusion, palm oil would have to cut greenhouse gas pollution by at least 20 percent compared to gasoline.

Which means that it should be an easy call: Of all the biofuels, palm oil causes by far the most pollution because much of it is grown by clearing and burning dense rainforests, many of them on carbon-rich peatland, to make room for plantations. That widespread deforestation has made Indonesia the world’s third biggest global warming polluter, just behind China and the United States.

EPA recognized some of the problems with palm oil in its draft finding that palm oil does not qualify for inclusion in the RFS … but just barely. However, a close look at EPA’s draft finds that it used old and deeply flawed data to systematically underestimate the emissions from palm oil. For instance, the analysis draws on data on plantation expansion that ends in 2003 – not taking into account how much worse the palm oil industry has gotten since then.

Newer studies from the National Academies of Science and the International Council on Clean Transportation find that the palm oil industry’s carbon footprint just keeps getting bigger:

The new study used satellite imagery to map the encroachment of oil palm plantations onto peatlands from 1990 to 2000, from 2000 to 2007, and finally 2007 to 2010. Despite increasing awareness of climate change in that period, the rate of peat destruction was higher in this last 3 year period than ever before. “Everywhere we looked, the drainage of peat to plant palm oil is increasing, “ said Dr. Chris Malins of the International Council on Clean Transportation, one of the organizations that carried out the study. “In the Sarawak province in Malaysian Borneo, for instance, based on the last 3 years we would expect over 80% of future palm expansion to be at the expense of peat.” The findings are echoed in a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Kim Carlson et al., which found that from 2008-2011 69% of palm oil conversion in the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan occurred at the expense of peat, even despite the introduction of a ‘moratorium’ in 2011.

All in all, this deforestation means that running a car on palm oil produces a lot more greenhouse gases than running it on Canadian tar sands. Indeed, a study in Science found that it would take palm oil biofuels grown on peatland a whopping 423 years to pay back the carbon debt created through land clearance. In other words, a palm plantation cleared in the year 1600 that produced biofuels for the last several centuries would still not have displaced enough oil to make up for the amount of carbon released when the land was cleared. Palm oil can make even dirty oil look green.

Read more

AP Photo

Industry: Light bulb war a dim idea

Big Business usually loves it when the GOP goes to war over federal rules.

But not when it comes to light bulbs.

Read more

A group of world leaders is calling for negotiators in Durban to move forward on a deal that they say would prevent massive deforestation and help substantially reduce carbon emissions.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon joined famed British anthropologist Jane Goodall at the COP 17 climate conference today to support a mechanism called REDD+ (also known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation).

They called it a “win-win” for reducing carbon emissions and preserving biodiversity.

The REDD+ mechanism, which is still being hashed out by negotiators this week, allows emitters to offset a portion of their emissions through forest preservation projects in developing countries. It’s one of the main agenda items in Durban actually getting traction.

Also joining the event to support REDD+ were Bill and Hillary Clinton, who spoke to a diverse crowd of diplomats, journalists and NGOs via separate recorded video messages.

“Clearing and burning of tropical rainforests is responsible for approximately 15% of global carbon emissions, but conserving forests is one of the most affordable ways to reduce pollution,” said Clinton in a brief address to a large crowd. “Help us fight one of the greatest threats in history.”

Read more

by Mike Roddy and Dr. Reynaud Serrette. Roddy is a former builder/developer who works for a commercial solar business.  Serrette is an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at Santa Clara University.

The climate-conscious home builder may ask him or herself: “What’s the most C02-friendly method of building a home?” We wanted to find that out as well, so we compared three different materials — steel, timber and concrete.

Surprisingly, it’s not timber. The answer is steel, which has a CO2 Index of 1 compared to 1.52 for concrete and a 4.44 for a timber-framed home.

Here’s how we found the answer by using a single-story, ranch-style house in Texas with three bedrooms, two baths and a garage for a model. The living space was approximately 116 square meters, plus an attached 47 square meter garage and storage area.

The structural systems for all three construction materials were designed by professional engineers.  Contractors then developed cut lists and block totals from engineered drawings.

Read more

Henry David Thoreau, one of the country’s first environmentalists, was born 194 years ago — July 12, 1817.

His writings remain crucial reading today. Even now his words cast an important light on our relationship with the planet. In this week’s space we celebrate Thoreau’s birthday by reflecting on his work and explaining how organizations are carrying on his legacy.

Thoreau was born in in Concord, Massachusetts, and he was one of America’s first and most important environmentalists. He is remembered best today for his book Walden, which describes his most famous exploit—leaving civilization to live in solitude on the banks of nearby Walden Pond. Thoreau was a gifted writer as well as a naturalist, abolitionist, philosopher, conservationist, and visionary environmentalist who could see the consequences of unrestrained and irresponsible consumption of resources.

Wastefulness was anathema to Thoreau. “Thank God men cannot fly,” he wrote, “and waste the sky as well as the earth.” Environmental stewardship was a cornerstone of his philosophy. He was constantly aware of what he used, what was a waste, and what was a necessity. Most of all, he opposed excess: “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”

Read more

Surprise, surprise:  It turns out small farmers aren’t as destructive to the world’s forests as multi-national corporations.

A new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists places most of the blame for deforestation on industry, not local farmers. Smallholder and subsistence farmers have historically been blamed as leading culprits in ripping down tropical forests, but new data shows that commercial agriculture (beef, soy, and palm oil in particular) and timber production are now the leading culprits.

Small-scale farming has become less important to deforestation in recent decades, as rural populations have leveled off or declined and large businesses producing commodities for urban and export markets have expanded into tropical forest regions.

Deforestation has changed from a “state-initiated” process to an “enterprise-driven” one. The major agents of deforestation are corporations that analyze it as an economic alternative, and choose it instead of other options because it is advantageous in terms of dollars and cents.

Deforestation contributes somewhere between 15% – 20% of anthropogenic carbon emissions.

Read more

The Wonk Room is reporting on the scene from Copenhagen during the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Fighting Deforestation

President Barack Obama “made his first public intervention in the Copenhagen climate summit” by supporting the Norway-Brazil plan to allow rich countries to fund the protection of rainforests. “”I am very impressed,” Obama said after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, “with the model that has been built between Norway and Brazil that allows for effective monitoring and ensures that we are making progress in avoiding deforestation of the Amazon.”

International approval for the Norway-Brazil proposal for a Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) mechanism still has a ways to go, especially as targets for reductions of deforestation have not yet been determined. In a possible breakthrough for the integrity of such programs, Google presented tools for the accurate monitoring of the rates of deforestation via climate satellite data.

Tuvalu Contretemps

Tuvalu’s proposal to amend the Kyoto Protocol to mandate strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions from all nations continued to embroil official negotiations, causing the shutdown of today’s plenary. China led objections to Tuvalu’s request for formal discussions, concerned that the negotiations could end up breaking the Kyoto Protocol’s delicate balance. Formal negotiations have been suspended until Saturday, when it is possible the delegates may take a formal vote on the amendments — an unprecedented event.

European Disunion

Three European countries received awards from the International Climate Action Network — two for setting the talks back and one for helping progress. Poland was deemed a Fossil Fool for preventing the European Union from strengthening its 2020 emissions targets in Copenhagen, while Germany earned opprobrium for its proposal that funding for climate assistance should be taken away from other international aid programs. In contrast, France was praised for challenging other EU members to close the “loophole in the accounting of emissions for forest management” — namely, getting unfair credit for existing forests — in Europe.

United States

The United States continued to have a strong presence behind the scenes and in side events, with Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack joining a panel on the future of international agriculture, rich and poor. While discussing his agency’s plans to expand renewable energy in the United States, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar noted that President Bush “simply slept” through global warming. Salazar brushed off questions from activists about his agency’s continued support for the expansion of offshore drilling and coal mining.

According to the World Resources Institute, the razing of forests from Indonesia to Brazil is responsible for the release of five billion tons of carbon dioxide a year, which amounts to 12 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — more than all the cars and trucks in the world. The international effort to comprehensively fund forest protection as part of a new climate treaty is known as reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). Experts estimate that an investment of about $10 to $20 billion a year will cut deforestation by half, if properly implemented. This is one of the cheapest routes to cutting global warming pollution, even ignoring the $4.5 to $5 trillion in benefits of saving the world’s tropical forests. As Papua New Guinea’s climate negotiator Kevin Conrad said last month:

We have to value forests when they are alive and standing. Presently, we only value them when they’re dead.

Saving the world’s tropical forests is a profound challenge. A funding framework controlled by corporations and international bodies raises great concerns from representatives for indigenous people, who worry that “States and Carbon Traders will take more control over our forests.” “Where countries are corrupt,” the United Nations notes, “the potential for REDD corruption is dangerous.” Realizing these fears, a $100 million scandal involving false carbon credits swept Papua New Guinea this summer.

“Logging companies may turn into carbon companies,” warns conservationist Rob Dodwell, who notes that only efforts that strengthen local communities rather than reward multinational corporations have any chance of being fair, sustainable, or trustworthy. An international framework to solve deforestation cannot ignore the “links between the exploitation of natural resources and the funding of conflict and corruption.” In other words, storing carbon must not be the only reason to save the forests.

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) have been leading efforts in the U.S. Senate to confront international deforestation. In February, Lugar said he hopes the United States will “exercise leadership in protecting forests and responding to the risks of climate change”:

Deforestation is a critical national security challenge because of its connections with threats from climate change and food security.

The Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), passed by the House in June, “provides funding for tropical countries to prepare and implement plans to reduce deforestation, as well as for achieving these reduction goals.” ACES establishes private and public financing from polluters to prevent deforestation, and would create an “International Climate Change Adaptation Program within the U.S. Agency for International Development to provide adaptation assistance to the most vulnerable developing countries.”

Last week, Sens. Kerry and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) introduced the Senate version of ACES, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. The international forestry provisions in the bill “echo those originally included in the House bill,” though it “would allow international offsets to account for a quarter of projects annually rather than the half called for in the House bill,” thus making the private offsets program more reliable, and shifting more responsibility to public deforestation projects.

Read more at the Progress Report, the daily email newsletter from the Think Progress and Wonk Room team.