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(12/04/14 10:44pm)
By Frank Saverino
Columnist
With the failed proposal of the Keystone XL pipeline extension in the Senate revving up climate change, energy efficiency and independence dialogue in the United States, Congress will look to decide whether to extend another key green policy: the Production Tax Credit. The PTC would benefit growing wind power and turbine industries across the nation.
The law benefits these electric companies across the grid by keeping utility rates low and encouraging better and cleaner green innovations from the companies and entrepreneurs who receive the break from the government. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) fully supports an extension of the PTC, claiming that wind powered turbines and mills efficiently generate cleaner energy from a natural resource rather than fossil fuels. They also create more jobs that stay in the U.S. every year. Wind power and turbine industries are continuing to progress in the U.S., but without the PTC, the AWEA warns that wind power companies will face severe cutbacks and layoffs.
The law is either reauthorized or declined every two years, and at the end of 2012, Congress stalled over the issue and continued to do so until it automatically expired at the end of 2013. Now, the PTC is up for extension again, and it is facing both strong support and opposition in Congress.
Several states have seen great results in investing in wind power. According to the Huffington Post, states like Colorado, Iowa and South Dakota have over 20 percent of their energy outputs covered by renewable wind energy. The AWEA cites that the PTC has helped jumpstart over 550 U.S. manufacturing facilities across the states which produce and deliver the parts needed to power currently over 15 million homes using wind renewables. Past discontinuations of the law have halted development plans and cost American manufacturing jobs for wind power companies, and the AWEA has urged Congress to issue a four-year extension of the PTC. A study by Navigant Consulting found that the PTC will keep and create 54,000 jobs for the U.S. Without the PTC, American manufacturers in wind industries will likely face severe layoffs.
The greatest opposition to the PTC is competing fossil fuel or natural gas-based electric companies, which will face the downside of the growth of renewable electricity by wind power. Representative Mike Pompeo (R-KS) has upheld that the increase in wind energy development has been over-sighted by the government. This is because the new tax credit for wind energy would largely outweigh the price that the standard electric output would cost a wind power company.
In his letter to Congress, Pompeo states that while “over 43 percent of all electric generation nameplate capacity additions in 2012 were from wind … this increase in wind development is occurring despite flat demand for power and is straining the electric grid and threatening reliability with a dramatic increase in an intermittent power resource.”
Pompeo echoes the concerns of competing electric industries as wind power advocates continue to call for an extension of the PTC starting next year.
(10/07/14 3:18pm)
By Frank Saverino
Columnist
A question has brought politically divided countries like ours to a standstill in efforts to raise environmental awareness and encourage eco-friendly practices: To what extent can we accurately measure the impact that humans have on extreme weather conditions and global climate change?
While it seems like the media will spin around this conundrum forever, some environmental scientists are battling this question head-on and developing new methods to analyze the impact human beings have on the environment. The goal is to be able to predict exactly how much our environmental footprint contributes to extreme weather patterns, events and disasters and inform climate change activists and skeptics alike.
A recent report from the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) noted that in 16 major weather events studied in 2013, human influence was clearly evident in exacerbating five violent heat waves experienced in countries like China, Japan and Australia. In developing climatic, geographic models and analyzing how anomalies attributable to human influence play into extreme weather, scientific reports by organizations like BAMS attempt to “foster the development of scientific methods that can be applied operationally to explain the underlying physical processes causing extreme events … and to place the event and associated processes in a historical context of climate variability and change.”
Meteorologists, journalists like those at Thomas Reuters Foundation and climate change activists from Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre will come together to find a “transparent and politically neutral” answer to whether we can attribute human influence to causing extreme weather events. They recognize the importance of this question, especially in the context of recovering the devastating impact that severe droughts, heat waves and rising ocean levels have caused within the past year. This is no climate change rally, though. There is evidence that anomalies attributable to human influence have affected sea ice levels and played a hand in heat waves across the globe. However, the reports also consider the natural variability in tracking and analyzing the causes of extreme weather via the models created by meteorologists. By recognizing variability, the scientists and activists hope to find clear, concise ways to measure and predict extreme weather in the context of a world governed by climate change.
(09/24/14 8:40pm)
By Frank Saverino
Columnist
Marine biologists studying baleen whales in the Gulf of Lawrence just north of Nova Scotia have found that female humpback whales tend to form long-lasting friendships, according to Grist.org. Using photographic evidence taken underwater, the biologists have observed pairs of whales reconvening every summer for feeding after parting for months to migrate and mate across the ocean. This suggests serious emotional and social capabilities for these giants, weighing on average up to 79,000 pounds. A single friendship between two whales has been recorded to last as long as six years. But their inclination to socialize in feeding groups closer to the shore makes them more vulnerable and easily targeted by poachers.
A group of fourth and fifth graders from Brookline, Massachusetts have led the charge against the amount of Styrofoam used by a big company that all of New Jersey knows too well: Dunkin’ Donuts, says their petition on change.org. According to their study, Styrofoam is one of the most damaging carbon-based products to the environment that we use every day, from restaurant leftovers to our cup of hot chocolate or coffee. The chemicals, especially hydrofluorocarbons, used to process and make Styrofoam can trap more than a 1,000 times more heat than CO2. Styrofoam makes up 25 percent of our landfill space and is a huge factor contributing to The Great Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean, due to the fact that it takes 500 years to decompose. The large patch itself is also harmful to sea creatures that often eat it accidently. The petition from Brookline’s students, which challenges Dunkin’ Donuts to stop their production of Styrofoam by Earth Day 2015, has gone national, and Brookline has joined other cities like San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C. that set a ban on the production of Styrofoam.
Remember Wikileaks? Well now there is Wildleaks, a secure website dedicated to whistleblowing illegal poaching, wildlife trade and forest crimes. It is a non-profit venture created by a group of experienced wildlife professionals dedicated “to facilitate the identification, arrest and prosecution of criminals, traffickers, businessmen and corrupt governmental officials behind the poaching of endangered species and the trafficking of wildlife and forest products.” The website maintains security for whistleblowers by keeping their identity anonymous and encrypting sensitive material submitted online.
(09/09/14 4:50am)
By Frank Saverino
Columnist
Last Friday, two deer halted rush-hour traffic in three lanes on the Golden Gate Bridge, running from the southern entrance across the bridge into Marin County. Animal-control authorities were called to the scene, but the deer had swiftly exited the bridge before their arrival.
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Recently deceased and infamous comedian and actress Joan Rivers had a serious love for animals. She was an activist for the animal rights organization, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). She led a movement with other PETA members that pushed the New York City council to create policies that banned chaining dogs in public spaces and endorsements for spaying and neutering.
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After a recent sighting in Otter St. Mary, British environmentalists are frazzled over the reappearance of Eurasian beavers. Being that the last report on beavers in Britain was made in 1789. Over 500 years ago, the English government enacted systematic efforts to hunt down Eurasian beavers from British waters both for trading their fur and protective environmental efforts. A surprise return for beavers has left environmentalists scratching their heads. Some fear that beavers, because of their tree-eating and dam-building habits, will cause a disruption in water patterns if their population re-booms.
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Back in the U.S., a maximum-security prison in Lancaster, California, is using a group of rescued dogs from a shelter in part of a rehabilitation plan for inmates. “Paws for Life” – a program partnering with Karma Rescue, a non-profit shelter that has saved over 6,000 dogs in California – and Los Angeles County Prisons has seen tremendous psychological benefits to inmates that applied for positions to take care of and rehabilitate dogs that have been lost, abandoned or abused. One inmate from Lancaster, Jack, reflected in an interview: “It’s a pleasure to simply observe dogs and to be observed by them. Caring for them is an opportunity and a privilege to openly display caring and compassion, and at times let my inner child out when playing with the dogs.”
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In China, a retired basketball star is the face of a campaign to stop the ivory trade from places like Kenya and South Africa, where ivory is still legal to trade, and his home country. The former Houston Rockets player, Yao Ming has partnered up with WildAid and appears in their new documentary, “The End of the Wild.” His “Say No to Ivory” campaign ads requesting that the government ban its part in the trade are already airing on television and on billboards in China. WildAid has estimated that about 30,000 elephants are killed in the ivory trade every year.
(04/22/14 10:14pm)
Since the explosion in the Gulf of Mexico occurred in 2010, BP’s resulting spill of over 200 million gallons of petroleum has been called the “worst man-made environmental disaster ever,” as even President Obama had termed it in his Remarks on the BP Oil Spill. Gulf Coast fishermen are still calling on BP to help aid their ailing oyster economy, which accounts for two-thirds of all of the U.S.’s oysters and 40 percent of our seafood catch, and has seen a steady decline in population since the spill four years ago. Naliah Jefferson’s recent documentary, “Vanishing Pearls,” voices the concerns of many of Louisiana’s fishermen. The fishing industry is still struggling to recover its industry and seek compensation from BP, despite the company’s claims made in 2011 after the spill that “no direct oiling of sampled reefs was noted during annual sampling of public oyster seed grounds in Louisiana.” BP’s cleanup process and efforts have cost the company $26 million in fines, damage reparations and penalties awarded to the victims (the explosion killed 11 workers on the rig), inhabitants and business owners who depended on the Gulf’s fishing areas for a living.
Jefferson’s film documents how many of those who were compensated for BP’s spill took BP’s flat offers of $5,000 because they were desperate for any assistance after going months without pay and/or business. With the oyster economy still declining four years later and seven fishing areas still blocked off from coastal workers, many still feel that the compensation given by BP to Louisiana has been largely ineffective in recovering the Gulf and restoring lost business, and has been unfair in its allocation. Jules Melancon, a local fisherman, feels he has been unjustly compensated, since he still has been unable to find live oysters in his leased fishing area following the spill.
“They got an advert on TV saying they fixed the Gulf but I’ve never been fixed,” Melancon said.
Jefferson’s documentary exploits BP’s most recent advertisement claims that the Gulf is clean and that the “waters and beaches are open.”
A study by CNN has shown that since the BP spill, Louisiana’s oyster catch has fallen by 25 percent, and although other studies have shown a rebound in fishing areas affected by the spill, there is still a decline in other seafood catches, such as blue crab and shrimp. George Barisich, an oyster boater, saw many dead oysters and “spats” of oil in his catch, and he has heard the same from other fishers in the Gulf.
“You get a spike in production every now and then, but overall, it’s off,” he told CNN worriedly. “Everybody’s down. Everywhere there was dispersed oil and heavily oiled, the production is down.”
Since then, Barisich has retired from the oyster trade.
Although much of the oil on the surface from the spill has been broken down by high-carbon molecules, environmental scientists have been concerned with testing the effect that the dispersants used by BP over the thousand miles of affected water has had on the Gulf’s ecosystem, which has seen a decline in several other species such as crickets, grasshoppers and ants.
Although some of the Gulf areas have bounced back and tourism has seen an increase, the demand for oysters is down and oil prices for boaters have gone up, and the areas hit hardest by the BP spill are still suffering from the disastrous consequences the spill had on their homes and businesses.
(04/08/14 3:11pm)
Altaeros Energies, a company based out of Alaska, has engineered the Buoyant Airborne Turbine (BAT), an inflatable shell that can carry a wind turbine thousands of feet in the air and therefore harness five to eight times more energy than a standard ground wind turbine could. The BAT can receive energy from winds reaching 45 mph and conducts power through its tough tether cables that secure it to the ground. Because of the relatively easy set-up, the BAT is intended to provide electricity, telecommunication services and Internet to remote areas and disaster-relief communities.
In reducing our nation’s emission rates and reliance on fossil fuel, wind power is emerging as the most efficient and cleanest method, even more than natural gas. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, wind energy is expected to make up 4.6 percent of the U.S.’s energy output by 2015. Wind energy, at this rate, could provide electric power to over 23 million homes. The U.S. Department of Energy has created and shared a new interface on its website, which tracks the development of wind farms across the country and explicates their individual potential to deliver cleaner and more energy to homes within their areas.
The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has reported that because of wind power, the U.S. has significantly reduced its carbon footprint this past year by 4.4 percent, or 95.6 million metric tons of CO2. President Obama’s Climate Change Agenda set expectations for the U.S. to decrease emissions by 17 percent by 2020, and it looks as though wind-generated energy could help make reaching that goal a possibility.
From 2005 to 2012, the U.S. reduced its emissions of greenhouse gasses by 12 percent, and this trend was largely seen as the consequence of the U.S.’s movement toward natural gas instead of burning coal. Energy generated from natural gas made up 30 percent of the U.S.’s total output last year. However, because of a growing market demand for renewables, if natural gas prices continue to rise, power plants may make a switch back to coal. Also, although burning natural gas emits about half the amount of CO2 that burning coal does, the methane released from natural gas sources during fracking contributes to climate change and is harmful to the surrounding environments of natural gas wells.
Wind generation is proving to be the most effective and cleanest way to channel renewable energy. For example, wind farms and turbines do not waste water like thermal power plants do, which boil large pools of water to heat their reactions and then cool down those reactors with more water. According to AWEA, by switching to wind power, the U.S. has avoided wasting 36.5 billion gallons of water last year.
With the possibilities of production tax credit and the new standards being developed by the EPA for emissions by existing power plants in the U.S., the incentives for constructing wind farms are increasing. Because of their performance in lessening the U.S.’s carbon footprint, wind farms could contribute to radically different standards in the search for cleaner and more efficient methods of providing renewable energy.
(03/25/14 4:05pm)
Last year, as the plans to develop and construct the sites and arenas for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi were initiated, the Games’ master, Dmitry Chernyshenko, assured that Russia was “delivering the ‘Green Games’ … committed not only to protecting the environment ... but (also) dramatically enhancing the environmental situation” of the Black Sea resorts and game areas. However, looking back as the dust settles after Sochi, which the Russian government and other Sochi marketing franchises exacted 185 billion rubbles ($51 billion) in funds to produce, the environmental effects of Russia’s Winter Games have been devastating for Imeretinsky Valley’s subtropics and ecosystem.The construction of seven stadiums and the Olympic Villages that made up the Coastal Cluster and five Mountain Cluster resorts and complexes for slope events such as snowboarding, skiing and bobsleighing, all of which hosted over 2,000 athletes and were visited by thousands of spectators and dignitaries from around the globe, took seven years to complete. Sochi has surpassed the record for the most expensive Olympic Games ever produced, and the toll this past Winter Games has had on the Sochi’s surrounding environment has been far from green.
Although one of Russia’s richest sites of biodiversity and rare forest grounds, 8,750 acres of Sochi National Park were torn down to make way for the Sochi Games’ construction, including a large stretch of wetlands that was formerly home to as many as 65 species of birds. Many of the territories have seen large declines in populations of reptiles and brown bears, especially with the deterioration of the large Mzymta River. The park’s natural source of salmon has become heavily polluted because of the railroads and tunnels that were built beside it to connect venues with Sochi’s airport. Since the preparations for the Games began in 2007, the river had been collecting the debris and chemicals from the massive Olympic Park and resort constructions — Mzymta’s entire form has been misshapen by the process.
In 2006, a Federal Code to protect Russia’s rare forest sites enacted as a way to preserve “26 percent of the world’s last remaining forests untouched by logging.” However, in 2009, as Sochi Games’ projects progressed, the State Duma amended the code to allow the logging of rare forest species formerly protected by the Federal Code. Responding to environmental activists who were furious after the large logging projects in Sochi National park were completed and also attempting to adhere to Chernyshenko’s “Green Games” outline, Sochi projectors planted over one million trees to replace the losses due to the Games’ construction. Though a somewhat conscious gesture, the concern is still for the lost ecosystem the forests once provided.
Gretchen Bleiber, a former Olympic medalist, appalled, condemned Russia’s futile attempts to make up for the damages to Sochi National Park, saying, “The problem is that you can’t destroy an old-growth forest ecosystem and just rebuild it elsewhere. The biodiversity that has been lost is immeasurable. Damage in the national park has spread far beyond the natural areas that were obliterated.”
Even the Games’ own is speaking out in defense of the forests and environmental habitats that were destroyed by the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games.
(03/04/14 5:46pm)
Beijing and other provinces have been enshrouded in a thick fog for several weeks. Beijing’s P.M. (particle matter) level is over 20 times the recommended density by the World Health Organization. These particles are 2.5 micrometers (0.00025 cm) in diameter, made up of a mix of acids, allergens and metals, and, when entering the lungs, they can rapidly increase the chances for heart and lung disease. Civilians are forced to walk the streets with face masks on, companies have ceased production, tourism is down and many flights have been canceled. The city is facing an economic downturn, and in provinces north of the city, agricultural workers fear for a severe epidemic to their crops.Investigation into the lack of sunlight that farm plants are receiving by China’s Agricultural University have led them to predict a “nuclear winter” for China’s crops if the heavy pollution continues to persist. A seed in one of their control labs took 20 days to start growing, while in the open air outside, another of those seeds took several months to reach that same progress. The situation is growing more serious, and although the government has been repeatedly urged by business owners and farmers to address the growing problem, government action has been scarce.
This week, 147 companies have stopped or halted production in an effort to cut down on emissions that were adding to the smog, although schools have remained open. The Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences already stated that Beijing was “uninhabitable for human beings” this month, and Li Guixin of the Hebei province north of Beijing is suing the government for “economic losses” his area has been dealt because of the passing pollution from the city. He commented to a media outlet, “These losses should be borne by the government and the environmental departments because the government is the recipient of corporate taxes, it is a beneficiary.” Li is demanding 10,000 renminbi (1,368 U.S. dollars) in reparation for the hardships faced by Hebel.
Last month, President Xi Jinping made a surprise visit to the city and was seen wearing no face protection, leaving many media and social commentators aghast at the lack of awareness the president showed for the harmful health effects the pollution has had on the people of Beijing. The city is second on the list of worst environments to live in around the world, and foot traffic in some of the city’s most popular sites has decreased by 75 percent.
Beijing is not alone. Other major cities, like Shanghai, Hong Kong and Linfen, in China are facing similar environmental crises and environmental activists of the country are hoping the large attention Beijing has continuously received by the global media for their high levels of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions (such as the immense clean up that was called for before the 2008 Summer Olympics) will create more cause for improving the dangerous conditions that many of China’s cities are in.
(02/18/14 4:19pm)
What can biology offer to engineering, technology and design fields and their respective careerists? Solutions, by motivating visionaries to emulate natural processes, which are billions of years in the making.
The movement of inventors and creative designers known as the “Biomimicry Revolution” takes advice from the “genius” of our planet’s ecosystems and organisms in order to transform our society’s technological capability and revolutionize our energy use. In an age where finding an equilibrium in the midst of rapid climate change is dominating national conversations and even the President’s address to the Union, the field of biomimicry is a relatively new arena for environmental activists, but the results of some of its earliest projects are stunning scientists and industrialists for the lengths biomimicrists are promising to take us.
Janine Benyus has been the leading voice for the field since she introduced the movement to wider acclaim in her book “Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature.” She is also the co-founder of the Biomimicry Guild, which consults with inventors and promotes projects that “look at nature as billions of years’ worth of research and development.”
In her studies, she has profiled several companies that have utilized the “blueprints” of nature’s tools to solve complex problems, from making nanotechnology safer by imitating sulfur-reducing bacteria in order to secure loose nanoparticles to improving the structure and strength of cars, roads and even bulletproof vests with something as simple, but incredibly tough, as the silk web of spiders.
One company, Regen, investigates how bees and ants most effectively communicate with each other to find food and maximize their own energy output or “energy grid.” Regen transposes this “swarm technology” to such commonplace products as home appliances, creating an algorithm that is designed to, through conversation, find a peak power point for and regulate energy consumption between everyday technologies. A Cornell study is designing a “synthetic tree,” which can transport water the same way that trees do, from the ground up and through their roots, but without pumps.
Benyus and her fellow biomimicrists have complied and created a web-based search engine called AskNature.org, a website that reveals the many answers that nature has for society, from how nature prevents turbulence to how it regulates temperature, which can be the basis for innovative strategies in the design technology.
Point Loma Nazarene University has predicted that the industry stemming from biomimicry has the potential to constitute 300 million of the U.S.’s GDP and create 1.6 million jobs by the year 2025. For more information on the biomimicry revolution, visit biomimicry.net.
(02/05/14 12:50am)
Everyone has been battling the blasts of icy winds when making their way across campus, and no one could be wrong in saying that the definite feeling this winter is summed up by one word: frozen.
Earlier this month, the Northwest experienced record-low temperatures. Schools were shut down in both Minnesota and Chicago, and driving was banned in Indianapolis because of the skin-freezing wind chills and dangerous road conditions from heavy snowfall. Winter Storm Leon left hundreds of drivers down in Atlanta helpless because of a massive gridlock.
However, this winter, by comparison, might not be as chilly as you think. According to a study by Time, temperatures for January for the 10 largest U.S. cities have been close to or even surpassing the historical average highs for those areas. This surprising data begs the question: why have we been bundling up for such a sensational cold snap this year, meanwhile meteorologists are recording historically higher temperatures?
The more shivery and numb we might feel actually may indicate the nuanced effects of climate change. Monday, Jan. 6, was the first time in 20 years that average temperatures across the nation leveled at below 18 degrees. What felt like alarming temperatures this month were normal to us just four years ago. Weather patterns have certainly changed, and by adapting to this, studies show our warped perception of the weather will continue to surface when what was once typical winter weather leaves us shaking and trembling.
This changed feeling has been coined by Daniel Pauly, the result of “shifting baselines.” In studying the effects that overfishing has on the ocean and the misleading, healthy looking appearance of Caribbean waters and reefs, Pauly asserts that, “We transform the world, but we don’t remember it. We adjust our baseline to the new level, and we don’t recall what was there.”
Similarly, our “baseline” of what weather should feel like to us has been radically altered because of persistent climate change.
Not all of America has been bearing the “big freeze.” A severe drought has plagued California for months and continues into this year. 2013 was the driest year ever recorded for the state, and the lack of rainfall has serious implications. Officials predict that within three to four months, several lower-income communities will be without water if the dry times continue. Agricultural leaders and other small farmers are expecting stark setbacks in their yields for the coming year. Governor Jerry Brown has declared the drought a state emergency, and the federal government has entered into the pool of aid workers and volunteers that are attempting to help those suffering the most from the drought.
What might be surprising or unexpected weather conditions might actually prove our conditioned negligence in facing the ongoing problems caused by climate change. From East to West, bizarre or even not-so-normal weather patterns are continuing to point to larger signs of the current state of our environment.
(12/03/13 7:22pm)
[caption id="attachment_29689" align="alignright" width="485" caption="The pipeline has brought into question the harmful effects it can have on not only people, but also the environment. (AP photo)"]
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Since the inception of the project in 2008, controversy has surrounded the planned Keystone XL pipeline, which will allow the passage of crude oil from the oil sands region in Alberta, Canada down to the Gulf Coast, specifically large refineries located in Oklahoma and Texas.
The first two phases of the project have already been completed, and the final two are still awaiting approval from Washington D.C. The combined effort — if the latter stages are signed off by the President — will put the plans for the extension to incur total costs to equal over $5 billion.
The complete pipeline will allow TransCanada to pump an estimated 1.1 million barrels of crude oil per day to the United States, which some proponents of the pipeline believe will sever the nation’s continued reliance on farther and more costly foreign countries for oil imports, such as the Middle East. The oil sands region in Canada is the third largest natural source of oil in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
The President’s decision for the extension — which is set to be for next March — is a highly awaited result for Keystone, alternative energy activists and environment critics of the pipeline. Obama commented in his climate change conference last June that, “The net effects of the pipeline’s impact on our climate will be absolutely critical to determining whether this project is allowed to go forward.”
These plans are being delayed by Washington, while the concerns over the possible risks that the pipeline could present to people, as well as to the waters and farmland that the Keystone XL will “snake” through are amounting. The pressure is building on the President and his Climate Change Agenda to reduce the rate of the U.S.’s greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020.
The Alberta oil sands contain 54 thousand square miles of dense sediment called bitumen, which is a semi-solid form of petroleum mixed with sand and water. The deposit’s dark color and putrid odor lent the region its nickname of “tar sands.” Using modern shale fracking techniques, the “extremely-heavy synthetic crude oil” is extracted from the unconventional source, and currently, the active pipes are pumping 591 thousand barrels a day throughout the Midwest. Since Canada first started developing its shale practices, the European Union has been starkly opposed to the practices, labeling as a “dirtier” form of unconventional oil extraction. A Stanford study has found that drawing petroleum from oil sands is to be 25 percent more carbon-intensive than other methods.
Alberta local fisher and hunter Raymond Ladouceur has seen what he believes to be the detrimental health effects that the pipeline has brought onto him and his neighbors’ health and the ecology of the lakes where he still fishes.
In an interview with the Huffington Post, Ladouceur relents, “Chemicals have been coming down here for years, ever since the oil companies got started,” and that he has found mutated fish, sometimes with two or more tails. Also, a plague of rare cancers have spread throughout his small community of Fort Chipewyan, and Ladouceur believes that the fumes from fracking have caused him severe cardiovascular disease.
The Keystone XL pipeline is still under review by the government. However, the battle remains on unconventional sources of fuel that prompt processes like fracking and the risks these actions by oil companies pose to the environment and public health.
(11/12/13 3:31pm)
Since the 2011 Tohoku earthquake shut down and paralyzed Tokyo Electro Power Company’s Fukushima plant in Japan, the problems stemming from the level-7 nuclear meltdown are still unresolved, and the local residents (those of the evacuated 300,000 who have returned) remain fearful of the future harms that radiation exposure could have on their health, food and water.
The instability of the plant, its recent leaks of contaminated water, and the subsequent failures by TEPCO to control the recovery site have outraged Japan’s government and anti-nuclear energy critics alike, igniting an international concern over the handling of the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl catastrophe of 1986.
Immediately following the Tohoku earthquake (the most devastating Japan has ever seen and that killed over 15,000 civilians), the three running reactors’ fission reactions were suspended, and electronic coolant agents were activated to condition the fuel rods and prevent them from melting. The plant was stabilized momentarily.
The earthquake, however, had generated enormous tsunami waves (reaching heights of 133 feet) that swept over the plant’s walls and flooded the lower levels, damaging the emergency generators that had supplied power to the cooling system. The Fukushima operators struggled to repower the generators for two days before hydrogen explosions ensued, triggering a massive meltdown and causing considerable damage to the building surrounding reactors 1-3 and injuring several of the power plant’s employees.
One of the most difficult obstacles for TEPCO is to deal with the alarming amount of contaminated water that has been spent from the reactors as well as from the cleanup site and its constructions. Because they were pressed for time, TEPCO had sped through the building of a barricade to inhibit groundwater from spilling into the Pacific, and the company has admitted that its rushed plans have contributed to the high radioactivity of the surrounding ocean water, which had been recorded for the summer following the disaster.
TEPCO has been under harsh criticism from the Japanese government as well as international coalitions for its problematic handling of the devastation.
TEPCO has sought out support from outside sources but is still battling leakage from the large containers of toxic water they have built outside the plant and been pumping water into. Also to many critics’ dismay, TEPCO is preparing for a major operation to remove 1,500 of the spent fuel rods from the reactors and transport them each individually to more stable containers.
The problems that the cleanup of the Fukushima nuclear disaster still remain although two years have passed since the plant was hit by Tohoku, and finding the solutions to Fukushima is still far off.
(10/22/13 3:37pm)
Vice President Joe Biden visited the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters on Thursday, Oct. 17, and formally welcomed back more than 160,000 workers who were furloughed by the 16-day stalemate in Congress.
“They’ve got all that work piled up, so they’ve got a lot to do, so I’m not going to hold them up very long,” Biden said in his speech to the staff as they began settling back into their desks.
It’s finally another day at the office, but now that the EPA workforce is back on the clock, the heat over the EPA’s latest greenhouse gas emission standards recommences and continues to ignite.
The Supreme Court’s decision last Tuesday to allow a hearing on a particular segment of the Massachusetts v. EPA case in 2007 has brought both states and big businesses to battle on Capitol Hill over the federal regulations imposed by the Obama administration’s recent Climate Change Act.
In 2007, several industrial groups, now revisiting Washington, claimed that the EPA’s justification to regulate carbon dioxide was exaggerated and that the economic consequences of restricting coal plants are dire, considering the energy market is now graduating toward utilizing natural gas sources for fuel, such as fracking, instead of the traditional means of the coal fleet.
Then, the EPA’s guidelines had received the Supreme Court’s approval as permissible by the Clean Air Act. But the authorization was contingent on the EPA’s determination of whether greenhouse gas emissions are hazardous to human health and life.
In 2009, the EPA made its case clear on the dangerous effects of carbon dioxide pollution and presented carbon limitations for both vehicles and stationary sources, such as power plants, factories, etc. The restrictions were hit hard with criticism by 13 states and a slew of industrial factions and companies, such as the National Mining Association, American Electric Power, Southern Company and Xcel Energy.
A Federal D.C. circuit court ruling in 2012 deemed the EPA’s endangerment clause on greenhouse gas emissions sound, so it remains protected and separated from the current judicial review.
The Supreme Court, however, will begin to hear six of the cases debating the new EPA standards for future coal plants starting next year, and the court plans to reach resolutions by next summer. According to Forbes, the EPA will “require that all future coal plants be as clean as combined cycled natural gas units,” and that the plants can “emit no more than 1,100 pounds of carbon per megawatt hour, a significant drop from their current levels of 1,850 pounds.”
Vehicle standards will remain untouched by the judicial review, but the Supreme Court will begin to examine and decide whether the new standards on future plants are symptomatic of excessive government regulation and if the economic effects will be as drastic as the industrialists have argued.
Many opponents of the EPA, especially big oil states like Texas, have tried to disclaim the EPA standards as unconstitutional and have pressed the judicial branch to shift the powers to uphold and direct environmental reforms over to the hands of legislation representatives in Congress.
The Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott, has even said that “the EPA violated the U.S. Constitution and the federal Clean Air Act when it concocted greenhouse gas regulations out of whole cloth.” The Obama administration defended its implementing agency and said that it was Congress specifically that desired the EPA to have sovereignty in controlling and creating the laws of the new Climate Change Act.
The Supreme Court is left to mediate a highly bureaucratic and incentivized environmental issue, which has further implications both economically and politically as Obama’s Climate Change Act seats the EPA as its main enforcing organization.
(10/08/13 4:38pm)
The Environmental Protection Agency is one of the federal organizations that has been most affected by the recent government shutdown, with 94 percent of its employees furloughed indefinitely and many of its current activities put on pause. There are over 150 EPA facilities across all 50 states and four U.S. territories, the majority of which have been given a window of five days to cease operations. The EPA has reserved a core group of emergency staff — 1,069 employees — to continue working in case of an environmental incident that might create an “imminent threat to human life,” and only experiments or activities financed by unexpired or unobligated appropriations have continued running.
A whole slew of investigations conducted by the EPA across the nation have been halted after the federal government’s effective closure on Tuesday. For example, Brian Kelly, an on-scene coordinator for the EPA, was called on to inspect the ruins of the warehouse that had caught on fire just last week in southwest Detroit, but now the investigation has been put off because of the stalemate in Congress.
The warehouse’s last proprietor was the owner of Biochem Technical Services LLC, a private medical waste management company. The building was foreclosed shortly after its acquisition this summer because the owner was unable to afford the unexpended taxes that were due. Shortly after the fire, a local neighbor submitted photographs of what were 100 boxes of hazardous waste that were stored in the abandoned warehouse.
Because of the EPA’s closure, workers like Kelly are not able to properly handle the dangers of neglected hazardous waste and to find out who is responsible. The cause of the fire is still unknown, and not only is the release of chemicals and toxins from the storehouse polluting the air because of the fire, but the shambles left over after the building collapsed could be contaminated and posing a harmful risk to the surrounding community.
That is just one case of the way the government shutdown affects the normal activities of the EPA, and the employees are not only frustrated by the delay of their pay, but by the interruption of their work to solve environmental issues as well. One of the EPA’s employee representatives based in Chicago, John O’Grady, told The Guardian this week, “No one is going to be out inspecting water discharges or wet lands. Nobody is going to be out inspecting waste water treatment plants, drinking water treatment plants or landfills — nothing. None of that is going to be done. The employees are absolutely devastated.”
EPA employees in charge of writing laws for U.S. environment standards, such as vehicle fuel-economy ratings and greenhouse gas emission rates, are completely stalled, including those involved with the most recent efforts of the Obama administration’s climate change agenda.
One of the most ambitious and debated strategies for the EPA under the new plan was to tackle and restrict emissions by coal plants, which are the most responsible for greenhouse gas pollution in the United States.
This year, the government mandated that all future plants should be 40 percent cleaner than by today’s standards. By next year, the EPA had planned to begin scrutinizing and regulating all existing coal plants. However, in light of the suspension of EPA funds and projects, the government shutdown has temporarily delayed the new climate change agenda.