The Daily Climate: Bird's-eye view of coal power's "Three Mile Island"

by Emily Gertz

Published January 06, 2009 @ 09:07AM PST

Here's a bird's-eye view that conveys the scope of the enormous 300-acre spill of coal ash in Tennessee on Dec. 22, 2008:

For comparision, the same landscape on Nov. 20:

As information finally starts to emerge about the contamination, it becomes clearer just how devastating a disaster this is:

Arsenic Levels Near Spill Site Far Surpass Federal Limits: "Federal data show arsenic levels more than 100 times the acceptable amount in a river near a massive coal ash spill in eastern Tennessee." (The Washington Post)

Metal Levels Found High in Tributary After Spill: "An environmental advocacy group’s tests of river water and ash near the site of a huge coal ash spill in East Tennessee showed levels of arsenic, lead, chromium and other metals at 2 to 300 times higher than drinking water standards...The findings far exceed levels reported by the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Environmental Protection Agency or the TennesseeDepartment of Environment and Conservation. " (The New York Times)

Spill Could Endanger Sturgeon: Conservationists and biologists have been re-introducing sturgeon upriver of the spill.  What's happened to those fish who've moved downstream?  "Though there are plenty of variables, fish have not fared well in past coal spills, according to [Dr. Anna George, director of the Tennessee Aquarium Research Institute]. She cited a huge fish kill on the Clinch River in Virginia in 1967, where a ruptured dike allowed a large amount of similar coal ash into the water." (MSNBC.com)

A Spill at a Tennessee Power Plant Demonstrates Another Danger in Burning Coal for Energy: "Coal burning is to the environment what cigarette smoking is to the body, a point brought home with startling clarity last month when an earthen dam holding back a vast reservoir of coal ash at a Tennessee power plant ruptured, turning the area nearby into a landscape resembling Mordor. The sludge buried a dozen homes, left residents anxious about the safety of their water supply and, we hope, opened Americans' eyes about the dangers posed by our poor energy choices." (Los Angeles Times editorial)

Trucks Track Sludge Into City Streets:  "For two weeks, a seemingly endless line of trucks has traveled in and out of the TVA cleanup site. And with every trip, the trucks of hundreds of contract workers take a little piece of the spill with them. 'The mud is falling off their trucks, people are coming out walking through it,'said Kingston resident Audy Byrd. 'This is a small town and it is going to be covered in fly ash off of people's feet and tires.' Byrd retired to Kingston and runs the Kingston Trading Company shoe store downtown. After calling TVA to express his concerns, Byrd said a TVA scientist told him 'it is just mud.'" (WBIR, Knoxville)

The images are via the NASA Earth Observatory: "In the early morning hours of December 22, 2008, the earthen wall of a containment pond at Tennessee’s Kingston Fossil Plant gave way. The breach released 1.3 million cubic meters (1.7 million cubic yards) of fly ash—a coal-combustion waste product captured and stored in wet form. As fly ash dries, it is typically moved to new containment areas to continue drying, and it was one of these areas, housing dredge cells that facilitate further drying, where the containment wall broke. Some of the sludge traveled north through a valley, and some flowed to the east, where it damaged dozens of homes. The spill infiltrated the Emory River, buried some 120 hectares (300 acres) in sludge, and even knocked a nearby home completely off its foundation."

Video: Clean Energy, Climate Change Challenges in Africa

by Emily Gertz

Published January 05, 2009 @ 04:02PM PST

In a remote Ethiopian mountain community, using solar power lets the villagers give up the expense and risks of kerosene to generate electricity -- leapfrogging past centralized, dirty energy sources to live better and more prosperously than they did before. Plus, other other African views on the impacts of climate change:

Produced by the Global Environment Facility -- an international partnership that channels the funding created under different environmental agreements, including the UN climate treaty, into sustainable development efforts.

The Daily Climate: "Climate change is a major evil"

by Emily Gertz

Published January 05, 2009 @ 10:28AM PST

Climate change is a major evil. It's vast in scope and it's everywhere. The climate crisis would be a major issue even for a technically with-it bright-green secular Utopia, where every single citizen was an MIT grad. Of course our world looks nothing like that. Nor will it.

-- Bruce Sterling, Jan. 2009

Join in one of the web's most thoughtful conversations about the present and possible futures. It's going on right now: the annual dialogue between author, journalist, editor, and critic Bruce Sterling, and cultural strategist, social commentator, web strategist, and recent guest blogger at Stop Global Warming, Jon Lebkowsky.

Bruce is one of my favorite writers. He's best known as the author of several visionary near-future science fiction novels, including Heavy Weather (1995), an entertaining tale of political corruption, climate crisis, killer tornados, and really cool tech, in America 2031.

Five years later, Bruce wrote The Viridian Manifesto and begin a "Viridian design movement" which inspired me, and many colleagues to look for original and creative ways to solve problems like global warming. Nine years (and about 500 emails) later, we're still searching. Although it's clearer every day that many of the answers to climate change and other problems are out there, the barriers to change still tower above our tender noggins, as Bruce observes:

The people fighting climate change -- they look like Voltaire combatting Kings and Popes. They're still eighty percent witty comments. They have a foul, hot wind at their backs, but they don't yet have the battalions.

Communism, capitalism, socialism, whatever: we've never yet had any economic system that recognizes that we have to live on a living planet. Plankton and jungles make the air we breathe, but they have no place at our counting-house. National regulations do nothing much for that situation. New global regulations seem about as plausible as a new global religion.

None of this a counsel of despair. Seriously. We dare not despair because in any real crisis, the pessimists die fast. This is a frank recognition of the stakes. It's aimed at the adults in the room.

Read, think, and add your two cents, between now and mid-January.

Image: Hurricane Katrina, just before making landfall in Louisiana, August 2005. Source: NASA Earth Observatory.

Doubling America's Renewable Energy Isn't Enough

by Emily Gertz

Published January 04, 2009 @ 11:43AM PST

President-Elect Obama states in his latest weekly message that his economic revival efforts, now dubbed the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan," will include investments in clean energy and efficiency:

To put people back to work today and reduce our dependence on foreign oil tomorrow, we will double renewable energy production and renovate public buildings to make them more energy efficient.

Sounds good. But would doubling our renewable energy capacity (presumably by the 2012 election) really get us where we need to go?

Here are some numbers.

According to the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration (EIA), in 2006, renewable sources accounted for around 10% of the nation's total electricity generation: hydroelectric 7%, and the remaining 3% split between wind, geothermal, biomass, and solar/photovoltaics.

Nuclear provided 19% of the nation's electricity; natural gas about 20%. And nearly all the rest -- 49% -- came from coal.

If implemented well, coupling increased generation from renewables with retrofitting public buildings for energy efficiency -- along with a sizable spillover from that effort into the private sector -- could go a long way towards flattening energy demand.

Under all those happy conditions, doubling renewable sources from 10% to 20% would mean 10% less of something else. Coal power, as the source of most of the nation's climate-destabilizing (and with it, economy and security) carbon dioxide, is the obvious candidate.

Okay: Renewables up to 20%, coal down to 40%, in four years. It sounds like it would be a considerable accomplishment. But is really isn't such an audacious policy given that experts like NASA's James Hansen believe that a moratorium and phase-out of coal power is the single most important step to stabilizing the climate, and avoiding potentially catastrophic climate tipping points which would erode our national security and economy just as readily as the Wall Street meltdown.

In a recent paper, Hansen and several colleagues did not offer a timeframe for cutting carbon emissions, instead recommending that atmospheric CO2 concentration be the measure:

If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm, but likely less than that...[A]n initial 350 ppm CO2 target may be achievable by phasing out coal use except where CO2 is captured and adopting agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon. If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.

Right now we're on track to around 420 ppm by 2030 (based on an observed average of 1.93 ppm per year from 2000 to 2006), and even a fierce climate action advocate like Joe Romm at Climate Progress feels 450 ppm is the more realistic goal, politically as well as economically and technologically.

Nuclear plants take several years to license, and several more to build, so that capacity isn't increasing soon. So increasing renewable energy capacity at the modest rate the President-elect has proposed, from 10 to 20% in four years, will still leave coal with about 40% share in our energy generation capacity for several more years to come, even if we continue to expand renewables after 2012 -- and that in turn only if we assume next to no growth in energy demand. And, that no new coal plants get built in the U.S.. Those are several iffy wagers.

The goal seems to demonstrate in action tensions between Mr. Obama's traditionallly-minded economic team, led by Lawrence Summers, and his climate team, led by Carol Browner, described in this weekend's must-read for environmentalistas in The New York Times.

Problem is, economics as usual won't cut it in terms of climate, national, or economic security.

Here, as elsewhere, it's time for change.

Image: Solar thermal collector dish. Source: U.S. Department of Energy.

Bush's Midnight Rules Might Mean Better, Faster Obama Carbon Caps

by Emily Gertz

Published January 02, 2009 @ 04:19PM PST

We've blogged pretty critically about the last-minute changes to federal environmental and conservation laws that the Bush-Cheney White House has jammed through in its waning days. But apparently some think they may actually result in stronger and better laws to curb greenhouse gas pollution.

Here's how the argument goes: Rather than shoehorning carbon caps into existing laws, President Obama may be able to use the "breathing room" created by the changes to devise more comprehensive and effective carbon curbs instead of relying on broad and imprecise rules, and do so much more quickly than we were led to expect during the campaign.

Among other things, one midnight rule change to the Endangered Species Act mandates that the impact of global warming can't be considered as a threat to survival when evaluating a plant or animal for protected status. Another midnight rule change bars the government from regulating carbon dioxide emissions as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

Eco-activists have called these changes desperation moves meant to interfere with the new president's avowed agenda to fight climate change. The activists believe they'll backfire because of all the lawsuits and fights over coal-fired power plants that will erupt, fights that the new administration will want to get out of the way as fast as possible

But energy industry reps tell Jim Tankersley in the Los Angeles times that the law changes could actually mean better legislation in the end:

...energy lobbyists predict the challenges will fail. They say the Bush administration's actions give Obama time and political cover to take a more deliberative approach to emissions regulation and avoid overly broad, overly swift rules that could slow construction projects for schools and businesses, not just power plants.

Avoiding one broad rule means "they don't sweep in hundreds of thousands of small building projects around the country," according to energy analyst said Jeffrey Holmstead, "a former EPA clean air administrator who now represents energy industry clients at the lobbying firm Bracewell & [Rudy] Giuliani in Washington." (Sounds so sensible, doesn't it? This is why I wonder where the catch is.)

Enviros counter that actually, Bush has forced Obama's hand and speeded up the carbon regulatory timeline. Although the Obama campaign said that as president, he would move to use the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions within a year and a half of taking office, now he'll have to move more swiftly to enact new regulations, or else watch the states approve new power plants without considering their impact on the climate.

The Daily Climate: Fatalistic Friday -- Abrupt Climate Change, Now Faster Than Ever

by Emily Gertz

Published January 02, 2009 @ 10:28AM PST

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) dropped a troubling report into the mid-December holiday news hole. According to this report, abrupt climate change will cause disruptions to both our infrastructure and the environment during the 21st century that will sorely test our abilities to adapt. And these changes are coming much faster than the IPCC predicted in its 2007 report.

I took a glancing blow at coving this last week, but want to give it more attention now that we're all creeping back into serious business mode.

Relying on up-to-date data regarding lengthy drought in the Southwest, the findings suggests an even dryer climate in the Southwest by the 2050s. Both human and natural causes may be at work, and modeling of smaller areas is needed to make more precise and actionable predictions.

The report also already-observed trends in the melting of Antarctic and Greenlandic ice sheets, to raise the possibility of four feet of sea level rise by 2100 -- as opposed to the 1.5 projected by the IPCC in its last report.

And based on both models and observations of the recent, sharp loss of Arctic sea ice, rapid and steady September sea ice loss in the Arctic is likely over the rest of this century.

On the upside, the USGS believes that a couple climactic tipping points that have worried scientists a great deal are less likely by 2100. One is a shutdown of the great Atlantic current -- the thermohaline circulation that brings warmth from the tropics up to eastern North America and northern Europe. And probably, we're not looking at a massive release of methane from the Arctic seabed and permafrost, either -- although the speed of emissions of this powerfully destructive greenhouse gas is likely to increase all the same.

"We have to act very fast, by understanding better and by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, because it's a large-scale experiment that can get out of hand," Konrad Steffen told the Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin. "So we don't want that to happen." Steffen directs the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and was the lead author on the report's section on ice sheets.

USGS Press Release

Abrupt Climate Change: Report by the US Climate Change Science Program

And more Fatalistic Friday News:

NASA climate expert James Hansen makes personal appeal to Obama: End "profound disconnect" between action on global warming and the enormity of the problem (The Guardian)

Poll of international experts reveals consensus that CO2 cuts have failed – and their growing support for technological intervention (The Independent)

Sharp fall in hybrid vehicles sales as US tightens belt (Financial Times)

Move to Increase Logging on Oregon Land
(The New York Times)

Canada's vast forests, once huge absorbers of greenhouse gases, now damaged, add to problem (The Chicago Tribune)

Signs of Another California Drought Year (The New York Times)

Many delta islands may be lost (San Francisco Chronicle

Ocean Acidification Hits Great Barrier Reef (SciAm.com)

Stop Global Warming's Best of 2008

by Emily Gertz

Published January 01, 2009 @ 01:12PM PST

I gave 2008 every possible second to bring along something that would be the best in its class. Now that the entire globe has ticked over into 2009, here are my totally subjective choices for what really stood out last year in culture, along very general climate and/or sustainability lines.

Best Reading

The Stolen Forests: Inside the Covert War on Illegal Logging, is an amazing piece of reporting on how some nervy undercover activists are trying to stop illegal logging in Russia's Far East. The trees make their way into Chinese factories, and from there on to the shelves of Wal-Mart as as toilet seats and baby cribs. I've encountered very few reports that better expose the true complexity of the struggle for global sustainability. By Raffi Khatchadourian, in the October 6, 2008 issue of The New Yorker, which put video and audio extras online as well.

Best Viewing

Frontline: Heat, broadcast in early autumn, investigates how the world's largest corporations are responding to global warming: some are facing up to the challenge, while others are bent on enriching themselves with business as usual for as long as they can. In interviews in 12 countries with civic leaders, lawmakers, and top executives from many of the world's largest carbon-emitting companies, including U.S. oil giants, Indian automakers, and Chinese coal companies, it becomes painfully clear that despite a lot of chatter about saving the planet, few are sacrificing short-term gain to stabilize the climate.

Best Fashion:

Not available in stores, but far more interesting than even jackets made of PLA and sweaters knit from the wool of rescued sheep, was Stephanie Sandstrom’s pollution-sensing "EPA dress" (photo above; part of the 2nd Skin exhibit at the San Francisco Exploratorim). Sandstrom embedded sensors in the fabric that evaluate the surrounding air quality and wrinkle the dress in proportion to the level of pollution. "On days when the air quality is particularly poor, the EPA dress looks as if it has been pulled out of the laundry bin or from the back of one’s closet," wrote Abigail Doan on Inhabitat. The EPA dress makes the invisible visible -- a crucial step in creating real change. We need one that can sense carbon dioxide concentrations.

Best "Not a Plastic Bag" Bag:

I am definitely more inclined to carry around a reusable bag when it doesn't entail hemp, cheesy slogans, or adding a lot of bulk to the mess of gear I already sling across my shoulder. So this net bag from Saxony, Germany is my favorite reusable sack. I found it at Kiosk, my favorite little independent store in New York City. It's got style, compresses down incredibly small, and carries half-gallons of milk and cans of tomatoes without a hitch. It even embodies a touch of mid-20th century nostalgia, being made of threads spun for strength in the GDR. (That's German Democratic Republic, aka Communist East Germany, for my younger readers.)

Best Inspiration

So far I have few of the skills needed to undertake the projects covered in Craft Magazine. But when the new issue arrives every few months, seeing just how enterprising others are at making their own clothes, toys, housewares, and other goods gets my own imagination going, and inspires me to keep working on my skills. I enjoy seeing how "old" crafts are being brought into the present with cutting-edge designs, new uses -- including blurring the border between craft and art -- and technological materials like conductive thread and the Lily Pad Arduino -- a soft, washable microcontroller board. Readers of this blog may especially enjoy the latest issue, Craft 09: Green Craft. If you're more into resistors and sanders than yarn and fabric, Make Magazine is equally fine.

Best Listening

This American Life: The Giant Pool of Money was last year's best explanation of the roots of the home mortgage meltdown, and possibly the only explanation that was actually comprehensible. First aired on May 9, 2008, the radio show followed it up in the fall with an equally lucid installment that sought to explain the expanding financial crisis, Another Frightening Show About the Economy. If we're going to remake this financial system along much more sustainable lines, or even just keep political momentum going for expanding clean energy and curbing climate change in what's sure to be an economically stressed out 2009, then we need to first understand how we got here.

Simply the Best of 2009

The animated movie Wall-E seamlessly mixed physical comedy, social satire, and a love story into one and a half of the year's most enjoyable hours.

Even if all Wall-E was, was 98 minutes of well-crafted fun in the middle of difficult times, that would be enough.

Even if it was that, and got more people curious about this Buster Keaton fellow that everyone compared to Wall-E's first 20 minutes on screen, that would be enough.

But Wall-E was all that, and also -- without being a self-conscious, bummer, violent eco-apocalypse flick like the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still -- a very funny, somewhat hopeful vision of one logical endpoint to our use-it-and-forget-it (or in the case of our bodies, use-it-or-lose-it) consumer culture.

Images:

Top: EPA dress

Best Reading: Timber in the train station at Suifenhe, China. The country is now the world’s largest importer of logs and exporter of finished wood products. Photograph by Lu Guang, via The New Yorker.

Best Viewing: Still image from promotional video for Frontline: Heat.

Best "Not a Plastic Bag" Bag: German string bag, available at Kiosk

Best Inspiration: Cover of Craft 09: Green Craft

Best Listening: Via TAL web site

Simply the Best: Promotional image for Wall-E