I wanted to share this video from the Newshour on the death of the cap & trade bill in Congress, What Happened to Democrats’ Energy, Climate Change Legislation Plans?.

When the Democrats took control of Congress and the Presidency, many people thought that a compromise “cap & trade” bill (see “How Carbon Trading Works”) would be ensured. This compromise sets up a trading market
that allowed companies to pollute, but limited carbon emissions. A nice compromise. The story of the cap & trade bill is what Eric Pooley calls a “tragedy.” The House passed the bill, but the Senate killed it. Twelve Democrats backed out. No Republicans would support it out of fear of looking like they may compromise. Thus, the Senate could not reach the required 60 votes to pass the bill. There was a chance to set up a system only for utilities, but that chance has passed by. Now, it may take many years before the opportunity to pass legislation comes around again. Both sides of the political spectrum are at fault. Now, the battle over emissions will shift. The EPA is moving to regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act, but some leaders are talking about stripping them of this authority. Now, the pro-environment interests will be arguing with the anti-environment lobbyists over the authority of the EPA. The EPA may look at power plants at a case-by-case approach, which will end up in the courts. It’s about to get ugly.

I was camping this past week with a friend of mine who is an economist. We were sitting around the campfire chatting about climate change (ironic, perhaps), and he said that he was concerned about the relationship between the costs of fossil fuels and amount we consume on a global scale. He said that there may actually be a situation where our reduction of CO2 could cause China and India to consume more of it. I was intrigued and asked why?

There is a direct connection between the amount of CO2 we emit and the amount of fuels we use. So, to cut our emissions, will essentially mean that we must reduce the amount of fuel we use. As we reduce our consumption, the law of supply and demand (Econ 101) comes into play. As demand drops, costs naturally drop. As costs drop, countries that are rapidly industrializing like China and India will use more fuels at cheaper prices. They would, then, offset any gains that we might make.A recent report from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency found that the current economic downturn has caused the industrialized world (US, Canada, Europe, Japan, etc) to use less fuel and emit less CO2. But, these reduction have been “nullified” by increased use of fuels in the developing world (China and India). The good news is that 2009 was the first year that CO2 emissions were flat. The bad news is that they are still way too high and any gains that could have resulted from the bad economy were offset by the developing world.

This blog post, Global CO2 Trends Show Scope of Climate Challenge By Andrew C. Revkin, discusses the Dutch report. As an example, it compares China to France. These two countries have a fairly low CO2 output per person. France has a low CO2 output because it relies heavily on nuclear power. China has a low output because many of its people do not live in a world with electricity. Over the past 20 years, France’s output has dropped. During the same time, China’s output has grown like crazy. Soon, China will pass France, and, more than likely, it will pass every other country.

So, is there no hope? It seems that India and China are going to eat up more and more fuels and emit more and more CO2. It looks like the ship is sinking, so does it matter if we cut our emissions at all.

Well, if China and India are going to emit CO2 no matter what, we might as well cut our emissions. There is a history of innovation diffusion across economies, so investing in cleaner energy could be attractive to developing countries. Sharing our innovations helps everyone. It is good sign that according to the Dutch report one third of all new wind turbines was installed in China. There is also a connection between us and the developing world. There is evidence that agreements like the Kyoto Protocol helped to reduce emissions. Engaging China and India in these sorts of agreements may bare fruit.

Today is the summer solstice, the day that the sun reaches it’s highest point in the sky over the Northern Hemisphere. It’s the longest (sunlit) day of the year. So it’s official, summer is really here! And we should celebrate and spend time outdoors and visit national parks and natural areas and have bbq’s and pool parties… but we should do this with sustainability in mind.

Remember that our individual actions add up; there are a lot of individuals trying to make a difference. They make small changes, that might be the same you’re making…so if you recycle and your neighbor recycles, and the rest of the neighborhood recycles…well that certainly adds up! So as individuals we really can make a difference.  This summer, keep in mind how you travel, what you’re eating, how you’re cooking it, is it really hot enough to run the AC or does the fan suffice?…make individual decisions and changes and be confident others are too (I know I will be!).

What sparked this need to share and encourage you to have a fun, green summer? This article:

Summer Solstice Meets Record Low Arctic Ice http://www.huffingtonpost.com/benjamin-strauss/summer-solstice-meets-les_b_619416.html

In summary, this article helps us understand how over thousands of years we, people, have been following the sun and seasons and how we’ve recorded changes over those years. And what that information is telling us today.

“The solstice always keeps a steady beat; but lately, the rhythm of summer has been increasingly out of sync. As the climate has warmed over recent decades, high temperatures have arrived earlier on average, and a symphony of seasonal events along with them, from plant blooming dates to animal migrations to peak flow levels in snow-fed streams. Nowhere is this quickening more evident than in the Arctic — the fastest-warming region on the planet.”

Interesting about this article is that it examines the impact of the arctic melt vs. that of Greenland and how that might affect the United States. In my opinion, too often we’re told, think of polar bears!! Well, honestly that’s hard to do when we don’t have any here in the US or the Midwest for that matter…So, it’s good to get a perspective of things relative to the way we live.

“But why concern ourselves with the frozen crust of a distant ocean? The big question for Americans, as we move toward a national debate on energy and climate policy, is what comes next.”

I’ll let you read the article to find the thoughts about that question… and for now, I’ll bid you a  safe and fun Summer!!  But remember to keep in mind how you can make your summer activities green, be the 1 individual of the thousands of other individuals trying to make a difference! Of course if you have questions about how to green your summer, you have a resource in Moraine Valley- sustainability@morainevalley.edu - email anytime with thoughts, questions, ideas for you or our community.

Happy Solstice!

Take a stand against climate change in a small way this coming Saturday by turning off your lights for one hour.  The concept of Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney Australia.  Within a year, people all over the world joined in.  Last year, over 4,000 cities and 88 countries represented.  Join in this year by taking the pledge at www.earthhour.org.

As a librarian, I found this blog post by Adam Frank, Ways To Be Wrong: Climategate, Climate Science And Who Gets A Say, to be pretty interesting.  I teach students about evaluating and understanding information, and Frank discusses some ways that errors occur and also the value of expertise.  He outlines a key problem and that is the need for experts to effectively communicate results to non-experts without requiring the non-experts to get advanced degrees to understand.Here’s quote from the post:

Scientific analysis is rarely straightforward. In my own field of astronomy one does not just snap an image through a telescope, write up what you think it implies and move on. Anyone who has ever seen a raw Hubble Space Telescope image knows there are many, many steps requiring years of training, expertise and experience before the pretty — and scientifically relevant — picture emerges.So it is with the climate auditors. So it is with the much larger and more pressing issue of science and culture as a whole. Ultimately these debates are too important, and too easily manipulated (as the politically motivated climate deniers have shown) to simply rely on scientists saying “trust us”. On the other hand most climate scientists did not dedicate 15 years of their lives in training for their field because they wanted to be media communications experts. Nor should they be expected to handhold amateurs (I mean that literally — people who do not do this for a living) who will make countless mistakes and claim them to be verifiable truth.There must be a middle ground here. Perhaps an office should be created in the NSF, NASA and NOAA that works specifically in this new gray area. It would be worth the effort and the money. The stakes are simply to high to let the debate sink to where we are have fallen now. 

In a front-page story today, the New York Times (New York Times) reviews how climate scientists have started working to regain public trust, beginning with efforts to change the perception that they withhold or manipulate information. Along with official reviews at Penn State, East Anglia and the U.N., the National Academy of Sciences is developing a paper outlining what’s known and what isn’t known about climate change, and scientists around the world are now under more pressure than ever to be more transparent. They have their work cut out for them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/science/earth/03climate.html?ref=earth

Just to follow up on our earlier posts about the climate talks at Copenhagen, I wanted to share the link (see below) to a story from the PBS Newshour. Here is a piece of the transcript:

VINUTA GOPAL, Greenpeace India: The world leaders have failed the planet, and now it’s up to people to come together, because we need a deal that is real.

RAY SUAREZ (Newshour corespondent): That deal, of course, is the 12-paragraph nonbinding Copenhagen accord announced after two weeks of grueling negotiations and last-minute dealings. One hundred and ninety-three participant nations formally called for billions in aid to help poor nations cope with climate change, but set no firm targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.The U.N.’s climate chief, Yvo de Boer:

YVO DE BOER, executive secretary, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: An impressive accord, but not an accord that is legally binding, not an accord that, at this moment, pins down industrialized countries to individual targets.

RAY SUAREZ: At heart, the accord represented just how far President Obama and the leaders of China, Brazil, India, and South Africa were willing to go. At a snowed-in White House Saturday after his return, the president had a more upbeat assessment.

U.S. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: For the first time in history, all of the major — the world’s major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change. After extremely difficult and complex negotiations, this important breakthrough lays the foundation for international action in the years to come.

RAY SUAREZ: European leaders were notably absent from President Obama’s last-minute meetings. Today, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown demanded the entire process be reformed. He said, “Never again should we let a global deal be held to ransom by only a handful of countries.”On a different note, the British climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, singled out developing nations.

ED MILIBAND, secretary of state for energy and climate change, United Kingdom: Because there was point-blank refusal from many of those countries to have legally binding targets. I think it shows in a sense how far we do have to go to tackle the problem collectively.

RAY SUAREZ: China came under criticism for refusing to agree to legally binding and verifiable actions.

Watch the video and the read the transcripts of this story here: A Look at Climate Change After Copenhagen

I read an interesting piece in the Washington Post over the weekend by Mike Tidwell of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.  Tidwell’s piece is interesting in light of the EPA’s recent action concerning CO2 (EPA: Greenhouse Gases Endanger Human Health from the AP via ABC News) .  Tidwell’s basic argument is that most American’s are pretending to go “green” by washing their clothes in cold water and buying issues of magazines that are on “green” topics, but that we are not really changing the way we live.  He argues that we pretend to be green rather than actually making significant changes.  Here is a link to his article and a small quote: To Really Save the Planet, Stop Going Green

Green gestures we have in abundance in America. Green political action, not so much. And the gestures (”Look honey, another Vanity Fair Green Issue!”) lure us into believing that broad change is happening when the data shows that it isn’t. Despite all our talk about washing clothes in cold water, we aren’t making much of a difference.

For eight years, George W. Bush promoted voluntary action as the nation’s primary response to global warming — and for eight years, aggregate greenhouse gas emissions remained unchanged. Even today, only 10 percent of our household light bulbs are compact fluorescents. Hybrids account for only 2.5 percent of U.S. auto sales. One can almost imagine the big energy companies secretly applauding each time we distract ourselves from the big picture with a hectoring list of “5 Easy Ways to Green Your Office.”

As America joins the rest of the world in finally fighting global warming, we need to bring our battle plan up to scale. If you believe that astronauts have been to the moon and that the world is not flat, then you probably believe the satellite photos showing the Greenland ice sheet in full-on meltdown. Much of Manhattan and the Eastern Shore of Maryland may join the Atlantic Ocean in our lifetimes. Entire Pacific island nations will disappear. Hurricanes will bring untold destruction. Rising sea levels and crippling droughts will decimate crops and cause widespread famine. People will go hungry, and people will die.

Morally, this is sort of a big deal. It would be wrong to let all this happen when we have the power to prevent the worst of it by adopting clean-energy policies.(Mike Tidwell, Washington Post, December 6, 2009)

One of the things that Tidwell points out is that Obama would really need Congress to act in order to take significant action.  He doesn’t seem to think that this will happen.  However, this EPA ruling (EPA: Greenhouse Gases Endanger Human Health from the AP via ABC News) may be the sort of regulatory muscle Obama needs.  As Obama head to Europe for the climate summit, it will be interesting to watch how this plays out.

On Campus Sustainability Day, Moraine Valley students, staff, and faculty took the photo below as part of call to action to move toward 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere.  We are already above this level.  By taking this photo, the Moraine Valley community joined thousands of people from around the world who are working to bring more attention to the need for a sustainable future.  You can learn more at 350.org.

Here is a cool article called, The Long and Warming Road from Mother Jones. This is a timeline of research into global warming. It’s sort of a mile stone by mile stone view.