It's Getting Hot in Herre (02 August)

Reviewing The Latest in Environmental, Energy and Sustainability News

I try to avoid posting two bullet-filled compendiums in a row, but there's a bevy of juicy tibits on the sustaina-enviro-energy tip that I just can't pass up. First up, the Big Dog is grabbing hold of Ozone Man's coattails; via the WaPo:

Twenty-two of the world's largest cities announced yesterday that they will work together to limit their contributions to global warming in an effort led by former president Bill Clinton.

The Clinton Climate Initiative -- which will create an international consortium to bargain for cheaper energy-efficient products and share ideas on cutting greenhouse gas pollution -- includes Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and New York as well as Cairo, Delhi, London and Mexico City. While the group is not setting specific targets for reducing emissions, Clinton said he is confident the effort will both cut pollution and create jobs in the cities that contribute most to higher temperatures.
[...]
It is unclear how much Clinton's initiative can achieve in the absence of broader mandatory limits on greenhouse gases. The 40 cities he is targeting account for 15 to 20 percent of the world's emissions, according to Clinton aide Ira Magaziner. City officials can cut their governments' energy use and govern local building codes and land use, but they do not regulate the automobiles or power plants that account for much of a city's carbon dioxide emissions.

Climate experts said the effort could help but by itself it will not achieve the major reductions needed to curb global warming. Drew Shindell, an atmospheric physicist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said emissions must be cut in half by mid-century to keep Earth's temperature from reaching dangerous levels. "They can make progress, but it will be quite limited, I would think," Shindell said.

And don't forget about the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement--though I'm curious to see if municipalities are forging any concrete results.

Anyhoo, it's looking like initiatives such as this one and the one announced by the Govenator and Prime Minister Blair are all that we can hope for... unless there's a change in leadership in Congress. ThinkProgress notes:

Today in Energy and Environment Daily (sub. req’d), House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) said that if he remains in power after the November elections, there will be no action on global warming for the entire 110th Congress:

Continued Republican House and Senate majorities would likely mean more of the same on climate. House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said he would oppose global warming mandates if Republicans control the 110th Congress. “I think the information is not adequate yet for us to do anything meaningful,” he said.

Actually, thousands of scientists have agreed that global warming is real, humans are responsible for much of it and, unless steps are taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there will be extremely serious consequences.

Speaking of governmental action, BBC's Panorama programme takes a look at the concerted effort by the BushCo administration to carpet over the growing consensus that human behavior is a major cause of Global Warming. It was broadcast in early June, and you can watch the entire 42-minute show in Real format (though in a rather tiny window). You can also watch an excerpt of it, which has been uploaded to YouTube (hat tip to DeSmogBlog:



Now, you might be thinking that you're getting hit over the head with redundant information about the looming climate crisis. But it's still very important to keep getting this information out to those who might still be skeptical because of governmental misinformation. The World Changing blog had a post awhile back on American eco-literacy, based on a study/report done by the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation:

The bottom line, according to the report:

Most people accumulate a diverse and unconnected smattering of factoids, a few (sometimes incorrect) principles, numerous opinions, and very little real understanding. Research shows that most Americans believe they know more about the environment than they actually do.

For example, says Coyle:

That is why 45 million Americans think the ocean is a source of fresh water; 120 million think spray cans still have CFCs in them even though CFCs were banned in 1978; another 120 million people think disposable diapers are the leading problem with landfills when they actually represent about 1% of the problem; and 130 million believe that hydropower is America's top energy source, when it accounts for just 10% of the total.

It is also why very few people understand the leading causes of air and water pollution or how they should be addressed, says Coyle, adding that his years of research have found "a persistent pattern of environmental ignorance even among the most educated and influential members of society."

But there's hope--the more educated a person is, the more likely he or she will become actively involved in sustainable activities:

The gist is that Coyle's and others' research has found that environmentally knowledgeable people are:

10% more likely to save energy in the home
50% more likely to recycle
10% more likely to purchase environmentally safe products
50% more likely to avoid using chemicals in yard care
31% more likely to conserve water
twice as likely to donate funds to conservation

Using an admitted back-of-the-envelope calculation of what an improved level of environmental knowledge might mean for savings in the national economy, Coyle came up with the following:

• The U.S. Energy Department estimates that home electricity use in America costs about $233 billion per year. Increased environmental knowledge that led to a 5% reduction in home electricity use would generate annual savings of $11.5 billion.
  
• Similarly, gasoline use accounts for $137 billion per year and a sizable percentage of our petroleum usage. A 5% savings in gasoline brought about through improved fuel efficiency and driving habits would save nearly $7 billion per year.
  
• A 5% reduction in domestic water use would save $14.2 billion and trillions of gallons of water.

Alrighty then. On the flip, some more news, including my continuing green-car obsession...

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• European Tribune diarist joelado has some thoughts for critics of the recently released film, Who Killed the Electric Car:
  

  I have been told by many detractors that GM claims that they spent around a billion dollars on the EV1, what you don't hear is that GM puts every expenditure, from the beginning of the program to the very end, in that number. From the first cents paid to Aeroenvironment for the EV1 prototype somewhere in the mid to late 1980s to the last dollar spend on crushing the EV1 last year, a time period that covers more than 16 years. Simple math tells you that this averages out to only 62.5 million a year. Given that GM lost 4.5 billion in 1991, that is 4.5 billion in a single year, and 12.5 billion last year, 62.5 million a year clearly shows how little money GM spent on the EV1. The total expenditures per year averages out to about 6 dollars and 82 cents per vehicle that GM sold last year. Or you can think of it this way, the cost of running the EV1 project was one three hundredths of a percent of GMs total revenue for a year. (.03%) If GM's total revenue were 100 dollars the cost of running the EV1 program would have cost it 3 cents. I don't know about you but I don't spend pennies, I just put them in a jar and forget about them. Needless to say, GM didn't spend a lot on the EV1.

  
  He also goes on to note some of the technical innovations that GM frittered away, enabling companies like Toyota to become the leaders in hybrid auto technologies. It's worth a full read.
  
  
• The Foreign Policy journal's Passport blog points us to this fascinating article in the Chicago Tribune that traces where a tank-full of gasoline/petrol comes from:
  

  Paul Salopek deserves a medal. A few months ago, the Chicago Tribune reporter asked a simple but vitally important question: Where does the fuel from your local gas station actually come from? He was told by the oil industry that it would be impossible to trace the voyage - from ground crude oil to refinery to gas in your tank. But then Marathon Petroleum allowed him access to its shipment data for a downstate Illinois refinery, and Salopek volunteered for several months as a clerk in a suburban Chicago gas station that gets its gas from that refinery. He also traveled to several continents to find the refinery's oil sources - and to speak with the men who suck the crude from the earth. The result?

  $73.81 worth of unleaded pumped one Saturday afternoon by a Little League mom was traced not simply back to Africa, but to a particular set of offshore fields in Nigeria through which Ibibio villagers canoed home to children dying of curable diseases.

  Salopek talks to everyone: the people who extract, who ship, who sell, who buy, who profit enormously, and who stay awake at night worrying about the taps running dry.
  [...]
  Read the whole thing. It will make you incredibly uneasy about the state of America's oil addiction and the dramatic lengths to which we'll go - and the friends we'll make - to keep the taps flowing.

  
  
  
• I feel like I'm a broken record, but why aren't cars like this one being sold in the US???
  

  With gas prices heading for the statosphere (with no signs of coming down), Volkswagen is hoping that it's newest fuel-sipper will appeal to people wanting hybrid-like efficiency at a fraction of the price. The Polo Blue Motion, unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show back in February, gets about 62 mpg; while this isn't quite as breathtaking as some of the concepts we've seen (like the 157 mpg Loremo), it's available for sale now (in Germany). Perhaps the most appealing part of VW's new equation: the bottom line checks in at a shade under $20,000. According to Edmunds.com, this means that "hybrids may be in the limelight right now, but conventional diesels still hold the upper hand when the right measures are applied." With low-sulphur diesel coming to the States, we might be pumping biodiesel into one of these babies sooner rather than later.

  Well, hopefully it's coming in the next year...
  
  
• ...Cos it's becoming obvious that new car sales are trending to the small:
  

  Fuel-efficient cars are prompting the changing of the guard at the top of the auto industry. Toyota passed Ford for the number two spot, while Honda outsold DaimlerChrysler for the first time ever. As long as gas remains at $3 a gallon or more, Japan will keep rising, and many experts predict that Toyota will soon pass GM to become the world's largest automaker.
  
  Big cars tanked yet again, driving sales out of Detroit to their lowest share of the U.S. market in history. Sales of the Ford F-series pickup fell 43.5 percent last month, and the Explorer SUV were down more than 50 percent during July, according to The New York Times (via the International Herald Tribune).
  
  Toyota hybrids and small cars lead its passenger division to its best July ever. Toyota sold 5,023 of the Camry Hybrids and 10,137 of the Yaris subcompact (outselling the staple Ford Taurus, which dropped by one-third) . The Prius hybrid posted July sales of 11,114, an increase of 19.3 percent over the previous year.

  
  
  
• The Alt Energy Blog takes a dim view of ethanol:
  

  So is E85 fuel the answer to America (and the world's) addiction to oil?
  
  E85 fuel is not the solution. It is not even a part of the solution, it is a part of the problem. Here's why, in a nutshell:
  
  All US vehicles can burn 10% ethanol (E10), but the US does not even produce half as much ethanol as universal E10 would require. We make about 5 billion gallons of ethanol, but use 140 billion gallons of gas.
  
  E85 and "flex fuel" is a loophole for the automakers to sell guzzlers without having to pay CAFE penalties. It makes the problem worse. Ending the loophole probably means ending E85, because there is no other reason for it to exist.
  
  Since the best estimate is that every gallon-equivalent of ethanol takes about 4/5 of a gallon-equivalent of other fossil fuel to make it, each gallon of E85 really represents about 0.6 gallons-equivalent of various fossil fuels. Since most flex-fuel vehicles get roughly 2/3 the mileage on E85 as they do on gasoline, they burn about 90% as much fossil energy even at their best.
  
  Even if we can use "cellulosic ethanol" to reduce the inputs of fossil-derived fertilizer and whatnot, we can't make enough no matter what we do. The efficiency of the average gasoline-powered vehicle is about 15%, and we just can't grow enough inputs to make up for throwing 85% of our produced energy away. The most efficient use of biomass is in local combined heat and power plants, not as a feedstock for ethanol.

  I'm not ready to write off ethanol, but I am wary of it... and am certainly much more interested in biodiesel.