Sustainablog

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Nearly three years ago, I took note of Bill McKibben’s Grist essay calling for more artistic expression about climate change, and lamented the most popular offerings on the subject at the time: the movie The Day After Tomorrow, and Michael Crichton’s global warming conspiracy novel State of Fear. This past weekend, I had the opportunity to read one of the latest efforts to address climate change within the framework of popular fiction, Marvin L. Zimmerman’s The Ovum Factor. This “eco-thriller” is the author’s first novel, and he demonstrates a real talent for spinning a page-turning yarn: I read the book in two sittings. Despite the story’s fast pace, though, Zimmerman succeeds in creating a work that a reader may finish quickly, but won’t simply put down afterwards. The thoughts that reader may have upon finishing The Ovum Factor, though, often won’t necessarily coincide with the author’s intentions..

Zimmerman’s protagonist, investment banker David Rose, isn’t particularly unique: like a number of John Grisham main characters, he’s successful, but unfulfilled. He’s looking for meaning in work driven almost solely by profit margins. Ironically, it’s the head of the firm for which David works that provides him an opportunity to find such meaning: billionaire Isidore Steinmartz sends the junior associate to Southern California to assess a project underway by Cal Tech professor and Nobel prize-winner Charles MacMillan. The project is titled PANDA, an acronym for Project for Accelerated Neural Development in Anthropoids. In short, MacMillan is studying how to increase the brain’s development during gestation, and produce super-intelligent children. Steinmartz, a member of an elite secret society charged with watching for, and heading off, the extinction of the human race, believes a generation of such beings will be needed to tackle the massive ecological challenges facing the planet and humanity.

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Editor’s note: Chad Crawford, our regular writer on the intersection of religion and the environment, is taking some vacation time this week, so we’re pleased to offer another post from one of Professor Siman Sethi’s students in her Media and the Environment course at the University of Kansas. Writer Lauren Keith originally published this post to the course blog on Tuesday, March 11, 2008.

Are you there, God? It’s me, global warming.

When I logged on to Facebook yesterday, I was disturbed to see that my two least favorite things (organized religion and Yahoo! Inc.) have friend requested my best buddy, the Green Movement.

And the Green Movement accepted their friend request.

In a story posted yesterday on Yahoo! Green (which I had no idea existed until 12 hours ago), the Catholics’ second-in-command declared pollution a sin.

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A North American organization of energy experts issued a report that found that building more green buildings is the best way to cut carbon dioxide emissions (CO2), one of the major contributors to global warming. In fact, green buildings could cut emissions more deeply, quickly and more cheaply than any other global warming mitigation effort.

The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) was set up by Canada, the U.S. and Mexico to address environmental concerns raised over NAFTA. A representative of the CEC told Reuters:

The investments made for climate change benefit in buildings have direct payback, generally from the point of view of reduced energy costs and water costs as well the indoor health environment and increased productivity of the inhabitants of those buildings.

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This post is by Fred Krupp, President of the Environmental Defense Fund.

Earth: The Sequel tells the story of an exciting race that is just beginning — the race to develop low-carbon energy in time to turn our greatest environmental crisis into our greatest economic opportunity.

Many people have expressed surprise that I’d write a book like this about a problem so serious. And global warming is serious. With each passing year, scientists get more and more alarmed at the increase and extent of disturbing impacts. But this book is not about the doom and gloom of global warming. In fact, it’s just the opposite.

Earth: The Sequel is about hope, invention, ingenuity, entrepreneurialism, capital markets, commerce, and profit. These are words that most people don’t think of when they hear the term “global warming,” and they especially don’t expect to hear them coming from me. After all, I’m an environmental lawyer running one of the country’s most respected and influential environmental groups, advocating for good environmental policy.

I wrote this book because, after 20 years of studying global warming and trying to craft solutions to stop it, I know that government policy alone is not the answer. Enacting a hard cap on carbon will play a key supporting role, but the starring role belongs to American commerce.

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Saudi Arabia makes more than 10 million barrels of oil a day, but it may be turning an eye on a cleaner, brighter prospect: solar power.

Oil minister Ali al-Nuaimi told French media that the oil-rich nation is researching how it can become a center for solar energy research and eventually become a “major megawatt” exporter in the next 30-50 years. He also said that Saudi Arabia is ready to invest in carbon capture and storage, even developing technology to extract carbon dioxide (CO2 - a major global warming pollutant) from the atmosphere and store it underground (I’ll admit, I haven’t heard of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere before).

This all comes on the heels of an agreement last November by Gulf OPEC members to invest three-quarters of a billion dollars US to fighting global warming and financing clean technologies. But is this just an attempt to be seen as a big player in the hot solar energy field — or could the Saudi government be concerned about peak oil and increasing regulations around the world that make fossil fuel use more expensive?

Forbes.com

Renewable energy generates clean power, and the fuel is often free: There’s no cost to make the wind blow or the sun shine. But just as many people advocate for considering the full cost of fossil fuels in the price of electricity (the cost of the pollution, mining, etc), so too must the full cost and impact of renewable energy be accounted for.

A new life-cycle assessment study from the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York examined the four most common types of photovoltaic (PV) solar power cells — multicrystalline silicon, monocrystalline silicon, ribbon silicon and thin-film, if you were wondering — to find out how much energy and waste was involved in their creation.

“Emissions from Photovoltaic Life Cycles” found that even when accounting for the metals required to build PV cells, the efficiency of the cells, and the waste produced, PV cells still emit less global warming pollution throughout their life cycle than the fossil fuels needed to produce the same amount of power. Actually, most of the pollution from the solar power comes from the indirect emissions of the fossil fuels used to generate the electricity of the PV manufacturing facilities.

The most energy-intensive type of PV cell to make — the monocrystalline silicate cells — only emits 1.8 ounces of global warming pollution per kilowatt hour, compared to 2.2 pounds by a coal-fired power plant. All told, the construction and use of PV power would cut air pollution about 90 percent if it replaced fossil fuels.

The best-case scenario, of course, would be for solar manufacturing facilities to be powered by solar. Researchers concluded that 30 percent of the energy used to make PV cells could come from solar power installed on the roofs and parking lot of facilities.

While some people point out that the study only partly takes into consideration the transportation of PV components (most of which are made in China), the researchers want to broaden their work further to include end-of-life and recycling data of the PV cells. They believe this expansion could further improve overall emissions calculations.

Nanowerk
Scientific American
Treehugger

Bank of America may name carbon dioxide (CO2) - a major contributor to global warming - a potential liability when it considers financing utility sector projects. Chief executive Ken Lewis has also called for a national cap-and-trade policy at the 2008 Emerging Issues Forum.

You can listen to Lewis’ remarks to the forum here.

Change your lightbulbs, buy local food, keep your tires properly inflated: all of us in the green publishing space, both online and off, promote such actions as ways for all of us to live greener lives, and, more specifically, to cut our carbon footprints. “Low-hanging fruit” approaches to personal sustainability appeal to us because of their simplicity: we don’t have to make major changes in our lives to feel like we’re making a difference. As we attempt to reach beyond the “green” audience to people who are still “testing the waters,” and who are intimidated by the notion that “going green” means making major sacrifices, tips provide a valuable introduction to lowering one’s personal impact.

Still, the “simple actions” approach to sustainability also runs the risk of becoming simplistic, and even moralistic. Many of us are probably guilty of looking aghast at someone when we find out they don’t recycle, or buy their produce from the neighborhood farmers’ market. “It’s so simple,” we tell ourselves. We feel justified, then, in judging others, perhaps harshly, for the actions they don’t take.

In the latest issue of The New Yorker (published today), writer Michael Specter takes a look at the “simple” actions not only taken by individuals and families, but also promoted by the business world to consumers. British supermarket chain Tesco, for instance, has announced it will look for an easy method for identifying the carbon footprint of the products it sells. Walkers crisps (potato chips) already carry such a label. These are steps forward, no doubt, in providing information that consumers want. But, as Specter points out, there’s nothing simple about determining the carbon footprint of a product:

In order to develop the label for Walkers, researchers had to calculate the amount of energy required to plant seeds for the ingredients (sunflower oil and potatoes), as well as to make the fertilizers and pesticides used on those potatoes. Next, they factored in the energy required for diesel tractors to collect the potatoes, then the effects of chopping, cleaning, storing, and bagging them. The packaging and printing processes also emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, as does the petroleum used to deliver those crisps to stores. Finally, the research team assessed the impact of throwing the empty bag in the trash, collecting the garbage in a truck, driving to a landfill, and burying them. In the end, the researchers—from the Carbon Trust—found that seventy-five grams of greenhouse gases are expended in the production of every individual-size bag of potato chips.

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Last week, 350 wine makers and scientists from around the globe discussed how global warming is effecting their wines and how they can adjust their productions to emit less emissions themselves. Carbon sequestration was a hot topic, whereby carbon dioxide (CO2, a major contributor to global warming) is captured and stored underground, instead of letting it escape up into the atmosphere.

One admirable entrepreneur explained how he’s trying sequestering the CO2 himself:

Spanish producer Miguel Torres told delegates he was pioneering “carbon capture and storage,” whereby harmful CO2 emissions are trapped and stored underground.

At the foot of the Cordilleras of the Andes in Chile, Torres has already set up the first recovery process for the CO2 produced by fermenting grapes, he said.

“We are trying to convert CO2 into something solid, which will remain in the ground, instead of being emitted into the air,” he said.

If the Chile project — which Torres admits is still a small pilot experiment — is successful, he intends to implement a much bigger programme in Spain, with co-financing from the regional government of Catalonia.

Harvest season is already ten days earlier in most wine regions, and scientists reported that global warming would likely lead to “harder” and less aromatic wines. In Spain, some vines have been moved to higher and cooler areas or further inland. But some countries, like New Zealand or the UK, could start producing a wider variety of wines than their cooler climes allowed before.

AFP.com
New York Times

For perhaps the first time ever, U.S. businesses could be fined based on the amount of global warming pollution they emit. The Bay Area Quality Air Management District in San Fransisco has proposed a fine of 4.2 cents per metric ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) on every power plant, factory and even small business. CO2 is a major contributor to global warming.

The proposal would affect about 10,000 “stationary sources” of pollution and raise $1.1 million dollars a year in the Bay Area. While small businesses would pay perhaps $10 or less, the Shell oil refinery would be charged with $186, 475 per year for its annual emissions. Four other oil refineries, four power plants and a cement plant are the top emitters in the area. Even the San Fransisco International Airport would get $5,000 a year in fines.

Last April, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that CO2 is a pollutant and can be regulated under the Clean Air Act. But don’t call it a carbon tax: Jack Broadbent, executive officer of the air district told the San Jose Mercury News that the fine is a cost recovery fee because the money would not go into a general fund, but would be spent on the area’s emission-reduction programs.

As expected, environmentalists like the Sierra Club are lauding the move while the oil industry says it will raise costs for consumers. And economists say that until there’s a price on carbon, we’re not going to cut emissions fast enough with only voluntary measures.
The final vote on the CO2 proposal will likely happen in May.
San Jose Mercury News