David Suzuki, Air, and Intelligence

David Suzuki talking about air and alveoli
March 12, 2008 -- 11th Annual Commonwealth Lecture

Our lungs are made up of about 300 million capsules, or alveoli, and they are clustered around an alveolar stem like grapes. We have lots of these clusters in our lungs and we need them all to provide the surface area needed to come into contact with the air. If you flatten the alveoli of our lungs out into two dimensions, they would cover a tennis court. That is about how much surface area is wrinkled up in our lungs. Each alveolus is lined by a surfactant that reduces surface tension so that the air sticks to it. Immediately carbon dioxide rushes out of our bodies, oxygen and whatever else is in the air rushes in, and haemoglobin molecules in red blood cells grab on to the oxygen so that each beat of our heart can transfer that oxygen to every part of our bodies. And when you exhale you do not exhale all the air in your lungs. If you did that your lungs would collapse. About half of the air stays in your lungs even when you exhale.

The point I am trying to make is that you cannot draw a line that marks where the air ends and I begin. There is no line. The air is stuck to us and circulating through our bodies. We are air. It is a part of us and it is in us…

We think we are an intelligent creature, but what intelligent creature, knowing the role that air plays in our lives keeping us alive and connecting us to the past and into the future, would then proceed to use air as a garbage can and refuse to pay for putting carbon and all our pollutants into the atmosphere? We have much to reflect on the way that we use this sacred substance. It hurts me when I see young couples walking with a baby in a stroller and the baby’s nose is right at the level of the exhaust pipes of our cars. You might as well put a hose on the exhaust pipe and pump that stuff right into the baby’s body. Why are 15% of children in Canada now suffering with asthma? We are using the air as a toxic dump. We are air. Whatever we do to the air we do to ourselves.

AEP Settles With Government

AEP Settles Long-Running U.S. Acid Rain Suit
October 9, 2007 -- Reuters via ENN

U.S. power generator American Electric Power has settled an eight-year legal battle over acid rain with the U.S. government and other plaintiffs, but the agreement will not change the company's 2007 earnings, a spokesman said on Monday.

It agreed to pay $15 million in civil penalties and $60 million in pollution cleanup costs to end the long-running dispute about whether AEP illegally modified power plants and spewed acid rain producing chemicals across the northeastern United States.

AEP's biggest expense as a result of the suit will not start until 2017, spokesman Pat Hemlepp told Reuters by telephone. The company will spend $1.6 billion, in current dollars, primarily to upgrade a major coal-fired power plant in southern Indiana...

"This ends all litigation on this," Hemlepp said, adding that the deal would be formally announced on Tuesday morning.

AEP admits no wrong in the settlement. Hemlepp said that the company decided it was best to settle the suit rather than to drag it out any further.

The suit, brought in 1999, accused AEP of expanding or modifying its older plants without installing pollution-control equipment that would have curbed emissions that cause acid rain.

The suit involved nine of the oldest coal-fired plants of the Columbus, Ohio-based power generator. Those plants are in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia.

AEP, with 38,000 megawatts of power generating capacity, is one of the largest power producers in the United States. About two-thirds of AEP's power is made by burning coal, which creates emissions that cause acid rain, including nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide.

The eight states mainly from the U.S. Northeast involved in the suit are the ones that claim they are affected by the acid rain caused by the coal-fired AEP plants in other states. The states that joined the suit are New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island.

There are 14 environmental groups involved in the suit. Attempts to reach the Environmental Protection Agency and other plaintiffs were not successful.

AEP is among the utilities that have long fought the Environmental Protection Agency and so-called "new source review." Set up in the 1970s by various provisions of the Clean Air Act, new source review requires new plants or substantial expansion to existing plants -- the sources of emission -- have preconstruction environmental reviews.

Environmentalists have long charged that utilities, including AEP which has one of the largest fleets of older coal-fired plants, went ahead with expansions without seeking new source reviews.

The utilities and the EPA have fought over what type of expansions are to be included in the new source reviews for three decades. The Clinton administration settled many of the battles between utilities and the EPA but President George W. Bush's administration threw out those agreements.

Hemlepp said AEP has not violated the process and is cleaning up its fleet already, without pressure from the lawsuit it has now settled.

He said that AEP would stick to its forecast of $2.90 to $3.00 ongoing earnings per share in 2007, and the agreement would not affect the 2008-2010 capital spending plan, he added.

"We still strongly feel we did not violate the new source review regulations," Hemlepp said.

Biofuels May Raise GHG Emissions, says Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen

Biofuels could boost global warming, finds study
September 21, 2007 -- By Zoe Corbyn, Chemistry World

Growing and burning many biofuels may actually raise rather than lower greenhouse gas emissions, a new study led by Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen has shown. The findings come in the wake of a recent OECD report, which warned nations not to rush headlong into growing energy crops because they cause food shortages and damage biodiversity.

Crutzen and colleagues have calculated that growing some of the most commonly used biofuel crops releases around twice the amount of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O) than previously thought - wiping out any benefits from not using fossil fuels and, worse, probably contributing to global warming. The work appears in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics and is currently subject to open review.

'The significance of it is that the supposed benefits of biofuel are even more disputable than had been thought hitherto,' Keith Smith, a co-author on the paper from the University of Edinburgh, told Chemistry World. 'What we are saying is that [growing many biofuels] is probably of no benefit and in fact is actually making the climate issue worse.'

Crutzen, famous for his work on nitrogen oxides and the ozone layer, declined to comment before the paper is officially published. But the paper suggests that microbes convert much more of the nitrogen in fertiliser to N2O than previously thought - 3 to 5 per cent or twice the widely accepted figure of 2 per cent used by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

For rapeseed biodiesel, which accounts for about 80 per cent of the biofuel production in Europe, the relative warming due to N2O emissions is estimated at 1 to 1.7 times larger than the quasi-cooling effect due to saved fossil CO2 emissions. For corn bioethanol, dominant in the US, the figure is 0.9 to 1.5. Only cane sugar bioethanol - with a relative warming of 0.5 to 0.9 - looks like a viable alternative to conventional fuels.

Some previous estimates had suggested that biofuels could cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 40 per cent.

Global picture

The IPCC's N2O conversion factor is derived using data from plant experiments. But Crutzen takes a different approach, using atmospheric measurements and ice core data to calculate the total amount of N2O in the atmosphere. He then subtracts the level of N2O in pre-industrial times - before fertilizers were available - to take account of N2O from natural processes such as leguminous plants growing in forests, lightning, and burn offs.

Assuming the rest of the N2O is attributable to newly-fixed nitrogen from fertilizer use, and knowing the amount of fertilizer applied globally, he can calculate thecontribution of fertilizers to N2O levels.

The results may well trigger a rethink by the IPCC, says Smith. 'Should we go along the road of adding up the experimental evidence for each of the processes or are we better off using the global numbers?'

Critical reception

But other experts are critical of Crutzen's approach. Simon Donner, a nitrogen researcher based at Princeton University, US, says the method is elegant but there is little evidence to show the N2O yield from fertilized plants is really as high as 3-5 per cent. Crutzen's basic assumption, that pre-industrial N2O emissions are the same as natural N2O emissions, is 'probably wrong', says Donner.

One reason he gives is that farmers plant crops in places that have nitrogen rich soils anyway. 'It is possible we are indirectly increasing the "natural" source of N2O by drawing down the soil nitrogen in the world's agricultural regions,' he explains.

Others dispute the values chosen by Crutzen to calculate his budget. Stefan Rauh, an agricultural scientist at the Instituteof Agricultural Economics and Farm Management in Munich, Germany, says some of the rates for converting crops into biofuel should be higher. 'If you use the other factors you get a little net climate cooling,' he said.

Meanwhile, a report prepared by the OECD for a recent Round Table on Sustainable Development questions the benefits of first generation biofuels and concludes that governments should scrap mandatory targets.

Richard Doornbosch, the report's author, says both the report and Crutzen's work highlights the importance of establishing correct full life-cycle assessments for biofuels. 'Without them, government policies can't distinguish between one biofuel and another - risking making problems worse,' said Doornbosch.

Carbon Tax, CAFE Standards and Cap-and-Trade: An Economist's View

One Answer to Global Warming: A New Tax
September 16, 2007 -- By N. Gregory Mankiw, The New York Times

In the debate over global climate change, there is a yawning gap that needs to be bridged. The gap is not between environmentalists and industrialists, or between Democrats and Republicans. It is between policy wonks and political consultants.

Among policy wonks like me, there is a broad consensus. The scientists tell us that world temperatures are rising because humans are emitting carbon into the atmosphere. Basic economics tells us that when you tax something, you normally get less of it. So if we want to reduce global emissions of carbon, we need a global carbon tax. Q.E.D.

The idea of using taxes to fix problems, rather than merely raise government revenue, has a long history. The British economist Arthur Pigou advocated such corrective taxes to deal with pollution in the early 20th century. In his honor, economics textbooks now call them “Pigovian taxes.”

Using a Pigovian tax to address global warming is also an old idea. It was proposed as far back as 1992 by Martin S. Feldstein on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. Once chief economist to Ronald Reagan, Mr. Feldstein has devoted much of his career to studying how high tax rates distort incentives and impede economic growth. But like most other policy wonks, he appreciates that some taxes align private incentives with social costs and move us toward better outcomes.

Those vying for elected office, however, are reluctant to sign on to this agenda. Their political consultants are no fans of taxes, Pigovian or otherwise. Republican consultants advise using the word “tax” only if followed immediately by the word “cut.” Democratic consultants recommend the word “tax” be followed by “on the rich.”

Yet this natural aversion to carbon taxes can be overcome if the revenue from the tax is used to reduce other taxes. By itself, a carbon tax would raise the tax burden on anyone who drives a car or uses electricity produced with fossil fuels, which means just about everybody. Some might fear this would be particularly hard on the poor and middle class.

But Gilbert Metcalf, a professor of economics at Tufts, has shown how revenue from a carbon tax could be used to reduce payroll taxes in a way that would leave the distribution of total tax burden approximately unchanged. He proposes a tax of $15 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, together with a rebate of the federal payroll tax on the first $3,660 of earnings for each worker.

The case for a carbon tax looks even stronger after an examination of the other options on the table. Lawmakers in both political parties want to require carmakers to increase the fuel efficiency of the cars they sell. Passing the buck to auto companies has a lot of popular appeal.

Increased fuel efficiency, however, is not free. Like a tax, the cost of complying with more stringent regulation will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher car prices. But the government will not raise any revenue that it can use to cut other taxes to compensate for these higher prices. (And don’t expect savings on gas to compensate consumers in a meaningful way: Any truly cost-effective increase in fuel efficiency would already have been made.)

More important, enhancing fuel efficiency by itself is not the best way to reduce energy consumption. Fuel use depends not only on the efficiency of the car fleet but also on the daily decisions that people make — how far from work they choose to live and how often they carpool or use public transportation.

A carbon tax would provide incentives for people to use less fuel in a multitude of ways. By contrast, merely having more efficient cars encourages more driving. Increased driving not only produces more carbon, but also exacerbates other problems, like accidents and road congestion.

Another popular proposal to limit carbon emissions is a cap-and-trade system, under which carbon emissions are limited and allowances are bought and sold in the marketplace. The effect of such a system depends on how the carbon allowances are allocated. If the government auctions them off, then the price of a carbon allowance is effectively a carbon tax.

But the history of cap-and-trade systems suggests that the allowances would probably be handed out to power companies and other carbon emitters, which would then be free to use them or sell them at market prices. In this case, the prices of energy products would rise as they would under a carbon tax, but the government would collect no revenue to reduce other taxes and compensate consumers.

The international dimension of the problem also suggests the superiority of a carbon tax over cap-and-trade. Any long-term approach to global climate change will have to deal with the emerging economies of China and India. By some reports, China is now the world’s leading emitter of carbon, in large part simply because it has so many people. The failure of the Kyoto treaty to include these emerging economies is one reason that, in 1997, the United States Senate passed a resolution rejecting the Kyoto approach by a vote of 95 to zero.

Agreement on a truly global cap-and-trade system, however, is hard to imagine. China is unlikely to be persuaded to accept fewer carbon allowances per person than the United States. Using a historical baseline to allocate allowances, as is often proposed, would reward the United States for having been a leading cause of the problem.

But allocating carbon allowances based on population alone would create a system in which the United States, with its higher standard of living, would buy allowances from China. American voters are not going to embrace a system of higher energy prices, coupled with a large transfer of national income to the Chinese. It would amount to a massive foreign aid program to one of the world’s most rapidly growing economies.

A global carbon tax would be easier to negotiate. All governments require revenue for public purposes. The world’s nations could agree to use a carbon tax as one instrument to raise some of that revenue. No money needs to change hands across national borders. Each government could keep the revenue from its tax and use it to finance spending or whatever form of tax relief it considered best.

Convincing China of the virtues of a carbon tax, however, may prove to be the easy part. The first and more difficult step is to convince American voters, and therefore political consultants, that “tax” is not a four-letter word.

Sustainable Development: A 21st Century American Vision?

As I watched E.O. Wilson speak on BookTV today I was reminded once again of how finite the world's resources are for ourselves and future generations. If every human consumed at equal rates to Americans, it would require four Earths to sustain it. This somber statistic persuaded me to post this snippet I read during a recent BART ride.

Excerpts from:
Learning from History: U.S. Environmental Politics, Policies, and the Common Good
November 2006 -- By Richard N.L. Andrews, Environment

In 2005, the United Nations commissioned Millennium Ecosystem Assessment reported that over the past 50 years, rapid and extensive change in human ecosystems has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth. More land has been converted to cropland since 1945 than in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries combined, and water withdrawals from rivers and lakes have doubled since 1960. Since 1750, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the major contributor to global warming, has increased, with 60 percent of that increase happening between 1959 and the present. Fifty percent of all the synthetic nitrogen fertilizer ever used has been applied since 1985; flows of biologically available nitrogen in terrestrial ecosystems have doubled since 1960 and may increase by two-thirds more by 2050. An estimated 10 to 30 percent of all mammal, bird, and amphibian species are currently threatened with extinction.

These changes have contributed to substantial gains in human well-being and economic development at growing costs to the essential services that ecosystems provide to human societies: providing food, water, fuel, wood, and fiber, supporting and regulating natural processes that are necessary for human life and health (nutrient cycling, soil formation, water purification, the climate system, and the control of disease organisms), and providing spiritual and recreational values. These damaging trends are substantially reducing the availability of these services for future use.

U.S. environmental policies have been prominent causes of these damaging trends and must be part of any solution. Throughout American history, the United States' dominant policies have been to promote the economic exploitation of natural resources, first nationally and now globally...

At times throughout this history, U.S. environmental policies also have included initiatives to manage and protect the natural environment...

The net effect of these policies has been to provide unprecedented levels of material comfort to many people and extraordinary affluence to a few and to reduce and even repair some environmental damage.

It would be a mistake to attribute the vast environmental changes in the United States entirely to public policies. Policies tend to lag behind economic and social trends, because government typically acts only in response to a buildup of pressure for collective action...

The enduring challenge for U.S. environmental policy is to build, maintain, and constantly renew public support for effective environmental governance, at home and worldwide. To meet that need, U.S. environmental policy today must recover an essential missing element: a broadly shared vision of the common environmental good. Such visions have emerged at several points in the past. Examples include the sanitation movement of the nineteenth century; the City Beautiful movement of the 1890s; the Progressive civic reform and conservation movements that followed it; the New Deal vision of combining ecological, social, and economic recovery; and the vision of a modern society in harmony with its natural environment that was articulated in NEPA and widely voiced by the American public on Earth Day in 1970...

The closest current approximation to such a vision is perhaps the idea of sustainable development, as articulated by the United Nations' World Commission for Environment and Development in 1987 and in the Agenda 21 document endorsed by the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The commission envisioned sustainable development as a pattern of development that would meet the needs of human communities today without jeopardizing those of the future, and its vision specifically included economic development, ecological sustainability, and social equity as essential and interdependent elements...

Barring some new defining crisis or leadership commitment, the future of U.S. environmental policy will be shaped by the reemergence--or failure to emerge--of a new broad-based national coalition for an ecologically sustainable economy and inclusive and democratic society.

Banning Incandescent Light Bulbs: Economic Rationality

BAN THE BULB
May 9, 2007 -- By Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute

ECO-ECONOMY UPDATE:
BAN THE BULB: Worldwide Shift from Incandescents to Compact Fluorescents Could Close 270 Coal-Fired Power Plants

On February 20, 2007, Australia announced it would phase out the sale of inefficient incandescent light bulbs by 2010, replacing them with highly efficient compact fluorescent bulbs that use one fourth as much electricity. If the rest of the world joins Australia in this simple step to sharply cut carbon emissions, the worldwide drop in electricity use would permit the closing of more than 270 coal-fired (500 megawatt) power plants. For the United States, this bulb switch would facilitate shutting down 80 coal-fired plants.

The good news is that the world may be approaching a social tipping point in this shift to efficient light bulbs. On April 25, 2007, just two months after Australia’s announcement, the Canadian government announced it would phase out sales of incandescents by 2012. Mounting concerns about climate change are driving the bulb replacement movement.

In mid-March, a U.S. coalition of environmental groups—including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Alliance to Save Energy, the American Coalition for an Energy-Efficient Economy, and the Earth Day Network—along with Philips Lighting launched an initiative to shift to the more-efficient bulbs in all of the country’s estimated 4 billion sockets by 2016.

In California, the most populous state, Assemblyman Lloyd Levine is proposing that his state phase out the sale of incandescent light bulbs by 2012, four years ahead of the coalition’s deadline. Levine calls his proposed law the “How Many Legislators Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb Act.” On the East Coast, the New Jersey legislature is on the verge of requiring state government buildings to replace all incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents by 2010 as part of a broader statewide effort to promote the shift to more-efficient lighting. (See additional initiatives.)

The European Union, now numbering 27 countries, announced in March 2007 that it plans to cut carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020. Part of this cut will be achieved by replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents. In the United Kingdom, a nongovernmental group called Ban the Bulb has been vigorously pushing for a ban on incandescents since early 2006. Further east, Moscow is urging residents to switch to compact fluorescents. In New Zealand, Climate Change Minister, David Parker, has announced that his country may take similar measures to those adopted by Australia.

In April, Greenpeace urged the government of India to ban incandescents in order to cut carbon emissions. Since roughly 640 million of the 650 million bulbs sold each year in this fast-growing economy are incandescents, the potential for cutting carbon emissions, reducing air pollution, and saving consumers money is huge.

At the industry level, Philips, the world’s largest lighting manufacturer, has announced plans to discontinue marketing incandescents in Europe and the United States by 2016. More broadly, the European Lamp Companies Federation (the bulb manufacturers’ trade association) is supporting a rise in EU lighting efficiency standards that would lead to a phase-out of incandescent bulbs.

At the commercial level, Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, announced a marketing campaign in November 2006 to boost its sales of compact fluorescents to 100 million by the end of 2007, more than doubling its annual sales. In the U.K., Currys, Britain’s largest electrical retail chain, has announced that it will discontinue selling incandescent light bulbs.

Switching light bulbs is an easy way of realizing large immediate gains in energy efficiency. A study for the U.S. government calculated that the gasoline equivalent of the energy saved over the lifetime of one 24 watt compact fluorescent bulb is sufficient to drive a Prius from New York to San Francisco. While a worldwide phase out of the inefficient incandescents would reduce world electricity use by more than 3 percent, shifting to more-efficient street lighting and replacing older fluorescent tubes with newer, more-efficient ones might double this reduction in power use.

Although highly efficient compact fluorescent bulbs have been around for a generation, they have until recently been on the fringe, used only by environmentally-minded consumers and typically sold in hardware stores, but not in supermarkets. One reason consumers lacked interest was that the new bulbs can cost five times as much as incandescents. Only the more knowledgeable consumers knew that a compact fluorescent bulb uses only one fourth as much electricity as an incandescent bulb, lasts 10 times as long, and easily saves $50 during its lifetime.

One disadvantage of compact fluorescents is that each bulb contains a small amount of mercury, roughly one fifth the amount in a watch battery. This mercury is only a small fraction of that released into the atmosphere by the additional coal burned to power an incandescent.

Mercury released by coal-fired power plants is the principal reason why 44 of the 50 states in the United States have issued mercury intake advisories limiting the consumption of fish from freshwater streams and lakes. Nonetheless, worn-out compact fluorescents, watch batteries, and other items that contain mercury still need to be recycled properly. Fortunately, this is possible, whereas the mercury spewing from coal smokestacks blankets the countryside, ending up in the water and food supply.

Shifting to the highly efficient bulbs sharply reduces monthly electricity bills and cuts carbon emissions, since each standard (13 watt) compact fluorescent over its lifetime reduces coal use by more than 210 pounds. Such a shift also substantially reduces air pollution, making it obviously attractive for fast-growing economies plagued with bad air like China and India.

In the United States, an ingenious website called 18seconds.org (the name derives from the time it takes to change a light bulb), provides a running tally of compact fluorescents sold nationwide since January 1, 2007. As of early May, it totaled nearly 37 million bulbs, yielding a reduction in carbon emissions comparable to taking 260,000 cars off the road. Sponsored by Yahoo! and Nielson, the site also provides data on how many dollars are being saved and how much less coal is burned. Data are available on the website for each state, providing a convenient way of monitoring local progress in replacing incandescents.

The challenge for each of us, of course, is to shift to compact fluorescents in our own homes if we have not already. But far more important, we need to contact our elected representatives at the city, provincial, or state level and at the national level to introduce legislation to raise lighting efficiency standards, in effect phasing out inefficient incandescent light bulbs. Few things can cut carbon emissions faster than this simple step.

In a world facing almost daily new evidence of global warming and its consequences, there is a need for a quick decisive victory in the effort to cut carbon emissions and stabilize climate. If we can engineer a rapid phase-out of incandescent light bulbs it would provide just such a victory, generating momentum for even greater advances in climate stabilization.

Related post: Economic Irrationality

The Road To Clean Energy Starts Here, by Jeffrey D. Sachs

The Road to Clean Energy Starts Here
May 2007 Issue -- By Jeffrey D. Sachs, Scientific American

Realizing crucial energy technologies will take more than just research and development

The key to solving the climate change crisis is technology. To accommodate the economic aspirations of the more than five billion people in the developing countries, the size of the world economy should increase by a factor of four to six by 2050; at the same time, global emissions of greenhouse gases will have to remain steady or decline to prevent dangerous changes to the climate. After 2050, emissions will have to drop further, nearly to zero, for greenhouse gas concentrations to stabilize.

The overarching challenge is to make that transition at minimum cost and without economic disruption. Energy-saving technologies will play a pivotal role. Buildings can save energy at low capital cost, and often net overall savings, through improved insulation, efficient illumination and the use of heat pumps rather than home furnaces. Automobiles could, over time, reach 100 miles per gallon by a shift to plug-in hybrids, better batteries, lighter frames and other strategies. Of course, technologies such as heat pumps and plug-in hybrids partly reduce direct emissions by shifting from on-site combustion to electricity, so that low-emission power plants become paramount.

Low-emission electricity generation will be achieved in part through niche sources such as wind and biofuels. Larger-scale solutions will come from nuclear and solar power. Yet clean coal will be essential. New combustion techniques, combined with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), offer the prospect of low- or zero-emission coal-fired thermal plants. The incremental costs of ccs may well be as low as one to three cents per kilowatt-hour.

All these technologies are achievable. Some will impose real added costs; others will pay for themselves as lower energy bills offset higher capital outlays. Some estimates suggest that, as of 2050, the world will have to negate around 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year at a cost of roughly $25 per ton, or $750 billion annually. But with a world economy by then of perhaps $200 trillion, the cost would be well under 1 percent of world income and perhaps under 0.5 percent, a true bargain compared with the costs of inaction.

Achieving these technological solutions on a large scale, however, will require an aggressive global technology policy. First, there will have to be market incentives to avoid emissions, in the form of either tradable permits or levies. A reasonable levy might be $25 per ton of emitted carbon dioxide, introduced gradually over the next 10 to 20 years. Second, there will have to be ample government support for rapid technological change. Patents can help spur private market research and development (R&D), but public funding is required for basic science as well as for the public demonstration and the global diffusion of new technologies. In sum, we need a strategy sometimes described as RDD&D.

In the past two years, the Earth Institute at Columbia University has hosted a Global Roundtable on Climate Change, involving leading corporations from around the world. These companies, including many of the largest power producers, are ready to reduce carbon emissions. They know that CCS must be a high priority. A new Global Roundtable Task Force on CCS seeks to promote the required RDD&D. Fortunately, the European Union has already pledged to build at least a dozen CCS demonstration projects in Europe by 2015. But we will also need such centers in the U.S., China, India, Australia, Indonesia and other highly significant coal-power producers. In the low-income countries, this will require a few billion dollars; that is where the RDD&D investments of the high-income countries will be essential. The CCS Task Force aims to break ground on one or more demonstration plants by 2010 in every major coal region. By 2015 this crucial technology can be proved and added to the bid to avert climate disaster. This model of RDD&D won't stop there. Harnessing technology to achieve sustainable energy will involve much of the global economy for decades.

Carbon Currency: Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative

When Carbon Is Currency
May 6, 2007 -- By Hannah Fairfield, The New York Times

Amid steadily increasing carbon emissions, and a federal government hesitant to take the lead on climate legislation, 10 states have joined to create the first mandatory carbon cap-and-trade program in the United States. They aim to reduce emissions from power plants by 10 percent in 10 years.

Leaders of state environmental and energy regulatory agencies hammered out the detailed model for the program, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, over the course of three years. The program sets a cap on the total amount of carbon that the 10 states — as a whole — can emit. Starting in 2009, each state will receive a set amount of carbon credits for its power plants, and each plant must have enough allowances to cover its total emissions at the end of three-year compliance periods.

In 2003, George E. Pataki, then New York’s governor, invited governors of 10 other states from Maine to Maryland to discuss a program to cut power plant emissions. All but one of the states joined the program; Pennsylvania has observer status.

Officials have closely watched the European Union, which started its carbon trading market in 2005; analysts say the Europeans have stumbled on some fronts. “We’ve learned a lot from the Europeans,” said Judith Enck, adviser on environment issues to Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York. “The way we distribute the allowances will be vastly different than the European experience.”

To build a carbon market, its originators must create a currency of carbon credits that participants can trade. In Europe, power companies received these credits directly and could buy or sell from one another as needed. But most companies passed the cost of the credits on to consumers even though they received them free — giving the companies windfall profits. Power companies in Britain alone made about $1 billion from free credits in 2005, according to a study by the British government.

Participants in the United States want to avoid that problem by selling some or all of the credits at auction, with the proceeds going to state energy efficiency programs.

In Europe, power companies were not the only businesses to profit from the new carbon market. Because power plants there can use credits earned from offset projects that take greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere (or put less of them into it), businesses wanting to earn offset credits inundated the Europeans with proposals — many of which would have a negligible effect on emissions or were for reductions that would have taken place anyway.

To sidestep that problem, the program here limits offsets to five categories: capture of landfill gas, curbs on sulfur hexafluoride leaks, planting of trees, reductions in methane from manure, and increased energy efficiency in buildings. Power companies can offset 3.3 percent of a plant’s total emissions from any combination of the five categories.

“We saw what happened in Europe, so we limited the categories and set our criteria upfront,” said Christopher Sherry, chairman of the regional program’s staff working group and a research scientist at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. “We did that so we would have assurance that the reductions actually take place.”

Although Northeastern states have taken the lead in inaugurating a mandatory carbon market, California and some of its neighbors are not far behind. Those states are watching closely; Mr. Sherry and others involved in the 10-state effort are already helping California figure out how best to accomplish its climate plan.

“The idea is to see what everyone else has done, and learn from it,” said Dale Bryk, a lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council who has been involved with the Northeastern regional program and California’s advisory committee. “Let’s not start from scratch.”

Tackling Climate Change: A bargain

Tackling Climate Change: A bargain
May 4, 2007 -- The Economist (Subscription)

About 0.1% of world GDP would do it

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), set up under the auspices of the United Nations to establish a consensus on global warming and what to do about it, has now completed its fourth assessment report. The first two parts, published earlier this year, about the science and the impacts of climate change, were designed to spread gloom. Change was happening, they said; it was mankind’s fault; and it was going to be damaging. The third part, released on Friday May 4th in Bangkok, is about mitigating climate change, and is designed to spread hope. Just as mankind caused the problem, it says, so mankind can stop it—and at a reasonable cost.

In some areas of economic activity, emissions could be cut with no cost to consumers or taxpayers. The heating and lighting systems of many buildings, for instance, are startlingly inefficient. Improving this would cut both emissions and bills. Economists are troubled by this, for it implies that people and businesses are not maximising their economic self-interest; yet the low take-up of energy-efficient lightbulbs suggests this is indeed the case. Governments are therefore beginning to tighten regulations on the energy efficiency of buildings, and to talk about, for instance, banning incandescent lightbulbs. The IPCC reckons that such measures could cut 30% of projected emissions from this sector at no extra cost.

Transport is trickier, because car ownership is rocketing and the demand for fuel is fairly inelastic. If people want to drive they are going to drive, unless governments jack up petrol prices to levels that are politically unacceptable. So for emissions to fall in the transport sector, new technologies, such as more efficient biofuels or electric cars, are needed. Given a big R&D effort in this sector, there is a good chance that those will be forthcoming.

Similarly, in power generation, there is scope for cutting emissions. The cost of renewable energy, such as wind and solar, has been falling. Nuclear generating technology has improved. Carbon capture and storage, which involves taking the carbon dioxide (or C02) out of power station flue gases and injecting it back into the earth, is also a possibility, though that technology is at an early stage.

Technological solutions to climate change, then, are available. But most of those on offer in the power and transport sectors cost more than fossil-fuel generated energy. Fortunately, economics comes to the rescue. Burning fossil fuels imposes a cost to society that is not reflected in their price. Economics says that it should be; and if it were, the price of using fossil fuels would rise in relation to the price of using renewable energy.

Unfortunately, the social cost of carbon is hard to calculate. Plenty of economists have tried, with unconvincing results. It requires estimating the impact of climate change on economic growth, which involves too many unknowns. So the IPCC report starts from the other end. Rather than trying to work out the social cost of carbon, and letting it feed through to reduce greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere, it starts from a manageable greenhouse-gas concentration and works backwards to a carbon price. Conveniently, it says the “social cost of carbon is at least comparable to, and possibly higher than carbon prices for even the most stringent scenarios assessed by the IPCC”.

And what is the right price? The report says that to stabilise greenhouse-gas concentrations at 550 parts per million (a level most scientists think safeish) would require a price of $20-50 per tonne of carbon by 2020-30. That is along the lines of the carbon price established the European Emissions-Trading Scheme, which varied between $6 and $40 in 2005-06. It has not bankrupted the European economy so far. The IPCC’s economic models reckon, on average, that if the world adopted such a price the global economy would be 1.3% smaller than it otherwise would have been by 2050; or, put another way, global economic growth would be 0.1% a year lower than it otherwise would have been.

The world would barely notice such figures; so one might think that climate change can be easily sorted. The problem, of course, is that the numbers work only if they are applied globally. If a few countries—even a few big countries—adopt a carbon price, it will make little difference. All the world’s big emitters need to do it. Which brings the world straight back to the problem that sank Kyoto. No country alone can make a difference, and it is in every country’s interest to ensure that everybody else bears the burden. As the IPCC report convincingly argues, the technology and the economics of this problem are easily soluble. It is the politics that is so difficult.

Designing Cities For People

Designing Cities For People
May 1, 2007 -- By Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute

As I was being driven through Tel Aviv from my hotel to a conference center a few years ago, I could not help but note the overwhelming presence of cars and parking lots. Tel Aviv, expanding from a small settlement a half-century ago to a city of some 3 million today, evolved during the automobile era. It occurred to me that the ratio of parks to parking lots may be the best single indicator of the livability of a city--whether a city is designed for people or for cars.

The world's cities are in trouble. In Mexico City, Tehran, Bangkok, Shanghai, and hundreds of other cities, the quality of daily life is deteriorating. Breathing the air in some cities is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes per day. In the United States, the number of hours commuters spend sitting in traffic going nowhere climbs higher each year.

In response to these conditions, we are seeing the emergence of a new urbanism. One of the most remarkable modern urban transformations has occurred in Bogotá, Colombia, where Enrique Peñalosa served as Mayor for three years, beginning in 1998. When he took office he did not ask how life could be improved for the 30 percent who owned cars; he wanted to know what could be done for the 70 percent--the majority--who did not own cars.

Peñalosa realized that a city that is a pleasant environment for children and the elderly would work for everyone. In just a few years, he transformed the quality of urban life with his vision of a city designed for people. Under his leadership, the city banned the parking of cars on sidewalks, created or renovated 1,200 parks, introduced a highly successful bus-based rapid transit system, built hundreds of kilometers of bicycle paths and pedestrian streets, reduced rush hour traffic by 40 percent, planted 100,000 trees, and involved local citizens directly in the improvement of their neighborhoods. In doing this, he created a sense of civic pride among the city's 8 million residents, making the streets of Bogotá in strife-torn Colombia safer than those in Washington, D.C.

Enrique Peñalosa observes that "high quality public pedestrian space in general and parks in particular are evidence of a true democracy at work." He further observes: "Parks and public space are also important to a democratic society because they are the only places where people meet as equals. In a city, parks are as essential to the physical and emotional health of a city as the water supply." He notes this is not obvious from most city budgets, where parks are deemed a luxury. By contrast, roads, the public space for cars, receive infinitely more resources and less budget cuts than parks, the public space for children. Why, he asks, are the public spaces for cars deemed more important than the public spaces for children?

Now government planners everywhere are experimenting, seeking ways to design cities for people not cars. Cars promise mobility, and they provide it in a largely rural setting. But in an urbanizing world there is an inherent conflict between the automobile and the city. After a point, as their numbers multiply, automobiles provide not mobility but immobility. Congestion also takes a direct economic toll in rising costs in time and gasoline. And urban air pollution, often from automobiles, claims millions of lives.

Another cost of cities that are devoted to cars is a psychological one, a deprivation of contact with the natural world--an "asphalt complex." There is a growing body of evidence that there is an innate human need for contact with nature. Both ecologists and psychologists have been aware of this for some time. Ecologists, led by Harvard University biologist E.O. Wilson, have formulated the "biophilia hypothesis," which argues that those who are deprived of contact with nature suffer psychologically and that this deprivation leads to a measurable decline in well-being.

Throughout the modern era, budget allocations for transportation in most countries--and in the United States, in particular--have been heavily biased toward the construction and maintenance of highways and streets. Creating more livable cities and the mobility that people desire depends on reallocating budgets to emphasize the development of rail- or bus-based public transport and bicycle support facilities.

The exciting news is that there are signs of change, daily indications of an interest in redesigning cities for people, not for cars. One encouraging trend comes from the United States. Public transit ridership nationwide rising by 2.1 percent a year since 1996 indicates that people are gradually abandoning their cars for buses, subways, and light rail. Rising gasoline prices are encouraging still more commuters to abandon their cars and take the bus or subway or get on a bicycle.

When Beijing decided to promote an automobile-centered transportation system, a group of eminent scientists in China protested. They pointed out that the country does not have enough land to accommodate the automobile and to feed its people. What is true for China is also true for India and dozens of other densely populated developing countries.
Some cities are far better at planning their growth than others. They plan transport systems that provide mobility, clean air, and exercise--a sharp contrast to cities that offer congestion, unhealthy air, and little opportunity for exercise. When 95 percent of a city's workers depend on the automobile for commuting, as in Atlanta, Georgia, the city is in trouble.

By contrast, in Amsterdam only 40 percent of workers commute by car; 35 percent bike or walk, while 25 percent use public transit. Copenhagen's commuting patterns are almost identical to Amsterdam's. In Paris, just under half of commuters rely on cars. Even though these European cities are older, with narrow streets, they have far less congestion than Atlanta.

Not surprisingly, car-dependent cities have more congestion and less mobility than those that offer a wider range of commuting options. The very vehicle whose great promise was personal mobility is in fact virtually immobilizing entire urban populations, making it difficult for rich and poor alike to move about.

Existing long-term transportation strategies in many developing countries assume that everyone will one day be able to own a car. Unfortunately, given the constraints of land available for cars, not to mention those imposed by oil reserves, this is simply not realistic. These countries will provide more mobility if they support public transportation and the bicycle.

Do We Tax Energy Enough?

Here is the link with audio and video of this great discussion as well as related papers by Hassett and Parry. I would recommend signing up for a free subscription to Resources by Resources for the Future as well as reading Greg Mankiw's blog. Below is an introduction to the discussion.

Do We Tax Energy Enough?
March 29, 2007 -- American Enterprise Institute For Public Policy Research

What are the advantages and disadvantages of carbon and gasoline taxes? Ian W. H. Parry of Resources for the Future and AEI’s Kenneth P. Green, Kevin A. Hassett, and N. Gregory Mankiw will examine the pros and cons of carbon and gasoline taxes, discuss possible levels at which they could be set, and compare taxation to regulation as an alternative way to address environmental concerns.

Compact Fluorescents Release Poisonous Mercury

Mercury in Energy-Saving Bulbs Worries Scientists
March 28, 2007 -- By Lisa Von Ahn, Reuters via ENN

There's an old joke about the number of people it takes to change a light bulb. But because the newer energy-efficient kinds contain tiny amounts of mercury, the hard part is getting rid of them when they burn out.

Mercury is poisonous, but it's also a necessary part of most compact fluorescent bulbs, the kind that environmentalists and some governments are pushing as a way to cut energy use.

With an estimated 150 million CFLs sold in the United States in 2006 and with Wal-Mart alone hoping to sell 100 million this year, some scientists and environmentalists are worried that most are ending up in garbage dumps.

Mercury is probably best-known for its effects on the nervous system. The Mad Hatter in the classic children's book "Alice in Wonderland" was based on 19th-century hat makers who were continually exposed to the toxin.

Mercury can also damage the kidneys and liver, and in sufficient quantities can cause death.

U.S. regulators, manufacturers and environmentalists note that, because CFLs require less electricity than traditional incandescent bulbs, they reduce overall mercury in the atmosphere by cutting emissions from coal-fired power plants.

But some of the mercury emitted from landfills is in the form of vaprous methyl-mercury, which can get into the food chain more readily than inorganic elemental mercury released directly from a broken bulb or even coal-fired power plants, according to government scientist Steve Lindberg.

"Disposal of any mercury-contaminated material in landfills is absolutely alarming to me," said Lindberg, emeritus fellow of the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The mercury content in the average CFL -- now about 5 milligrams -- would fit on the tip of a ballpoint pen, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and manufacturers have committed to cap the amount in most CFLs to 5 milligrams or 6 milligrams per bulb.

The majority of Philips Lighting's bulbs contain less than 3 milligrams, and some have as little as 1.23 milligrams, said spokesman Steve Goldmacher.

To prevent mercury from getting into landfills, the EPA, CFL makers and various organizations advocate recycling.
Besides commercial recyclers and some municipal waste collection services, some retailers accept used CFLs.

IKEA, the Swedish home furnishings chain, has free drop-off programs at all of its 234 stores, 29 of which are in the United States. Spokeswoman Mona Astra Liss said response was slow at first, but has since picked up.

Now advocacy groups are calling on Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other big chains to get involved.

Andy Ruben, vice president for corporate sustainability at Wal-Mart, said the company was working with the EPA's Office of Solid Waste and others to find mercury and recycling solutions.

RECYCLING HURDLES

One problem with recycling is that it isn't cheap.

Larry Chalfan, executive director of the Zero Waste Alliance environmental group, said the value of the metal, glass and mercury reclaimed from recycling fails to offset the cost of the process. "Someone has to pay," he said.

Costs can range from 20 cents to 50 cents per bulb -- not a paltry sum when some CFLs sell for less than $2 at Wal-Mart.

But, compared with the overall lifecycle cost of buying and using a bulb, recycling would be less than 1 percent, said Paul Abernathy, executive director of the Association of Lighting & Mercury Recyclers, "a small price to keep the mercury out of the environment."

Another obstacle lies in the fragility of the bulbs and their mercury content.

"People who are going to accumulate these things from the public are going to have to address the fact that breakage will happen," Abernathy said. "There's the potential for contamination, and I think right now people are a little hesitant to volunteer to take on this liability."

The U.S. government has no single recycling plan in mind, said Matt Hale, director of the EPA's Office of Solid Waste.

Among the alternatives are special curbside collections by municipalities, mail-back programs by manufacturers and drop-off programs at various places, including retail stores that sell CFLs, he said.

Some methods lend themselves to certain geographic areas more than others, Hale said, because of differences in population density, transportation infrastructure and proximity to recycling sites.

State laws are also a factor.

Federal regulations mandate recycling of fluorescent lighting, while exempting households and other small users. Some states, however, are strict. For example, California no longer allows anyone to throw CFLs in the trash, while Massachusetts requires manufacturers to implement recycling programs and meet certain targets.

As technology advances, however, mercury could become less of an issue, at least as far as light bulbs are concerned.

Last month General Electric Co. said it was working on doubling the energy efficiency of incandescent lights and eventually developing versions comparable with CFLs. These bulbs, which the company hopes to begin marketing in 2010, will cost less than fluorescents but they won't last as long.

Meanwhile, some environmentally minded consumers are embracing CFLs and doing their best to dispose of them responsibly.

"I have CFLs throughout my house," said Lindberg, who lives in California. "None of them have burned out yet. I can't tell you what I'll do with them when they've burned out, but I won't throw them in the garbage."

Corn Can't Solve Our Problem

Corn Can't Solve Our Problem
March 25, 2007 -- By David Tilman and Jason Hill, The Washington Post

The world has come full circle. A century ago our first transportation biofuels -- the hay and oats fed to our horses -- were replaced by gasoline. Today, ethanol from corn and biodiesel from soybeans have begun edging out gasoline and diesel.

This has been hailed as an overwhelmingly positive development that will help us reduce the threat of climate change and ease our dependence on foreign oil. In political circles, ethanol is the flavor of the day, and presidential candidates have been cycling through Iowa extolling its benefits. Lost in the ethanol-induced euphoria, however, is the fact that three of our most fundamental needs -- food, energy, and a livable and sustainable environment -- are now in direct conflict. Moreover, our recent analyses of the full costs and benefits of various biofuels, performed at the University of Minnesota, present a markedly different and more nuanced picture than has been heard on the campaign trail.

Some biofuels, if properly produced, do have the potential to provide climate-friendly energy, but where and how can we grow them? Our most fertile lands are already dedicated to food production. As demand for both food and energy increases, competition for fertile lands could raise food prices enough to drive the poorer third of the globe into malnourishment. The destruction of rainforests and other ecosystems to make new farmland would threaten the continued existence of countless animal and plant species and would increase the amount of climate-changing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Finding and implementing solutions to the food, fuel and environment conflict is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. But solutions will be neither adopted nor sought until we understand the interlinked problems we face.

Fossil fuel use has pushed atmospheric carbon dioxide higher than at any time during the past half-million years. The global population has increased threefold in the past century and will increase by half again, to 9 billion people, by 2050. Global food and fossil energy consumption are on trajectories to double by 2050.

Biofuels, such as ethanol made from corn, have the potential to provide us with cleaner energy. But because of how corn ethanol currently is made, only about 20 percent of each gallon is "new" energy. That is because it takes a lot of "old" fossil energy to make it: diesel to run tractors, natural gas to make fertilizer and, of course, fuel to run the refineries that convert corn to ethanol.

If every one of the 70 million acres on which corn was grown in 2006 was used for ethanol, the amount produced would displace only 12 percent of the U.S. gasoline market. Moreover, the "new" (non-fossil) energy gained would be very small -- just 2.4 percent of the market. Car tune-ups and proper tire air pressure would save more energy.

There is another problem with relying on a food-based biofuel, such as corn ethanol, as the poor of Mexico can attest. In recent months, soaring corn prices, sparked by demand from ethanol plants, have doubled the price of tortillas, a staple food. Tens of thousands of Mexico City's poor recently protested this "ethanol tax" in the streets.

In the United States, the protests have also begun -- in Congress. Representatives of the dairy, poultry and livestock industries, which rely on corn as a principal animal feed, are seeking an end to subsidies for corn ethanol in the hope of stabilizing corn prices. (It takes about three pounds of corn to produce a pound of chicken, and seven or eight pounds to grow a pound of beef.) Profit margins are being squeezed, and meat prices are rising.

U.S. soybeans, which are used to make biodiesel, may be about to follow corn's trajectory, escalating the food vs. fuel conflict. The National Biodiesel Board recently reported that 77 biodiesel production plants are under construction and that eight established plants are expanding capacity.

In terms of environmental impact, all biofuels are not created equal. Ethanol is the same chemical product no matter what its source. But ethanol made from prairie grasses, from corn grown in Illinois and from sugar cane grown on newly cleared land in Brazil have radically different impacts on greenhouse gases.

Corn, like all plants, is a natural part of the global carbon cycle. The growing crop absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, so burning corn ethanol does not directly create any additional carbon. But that is only part of the story. All of the fossil fuels used to grow corn and change it into ethanol release new carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The net effect is that ethanol from corn grown in the Corn Belt does increase atmospheric greenhouse gases, and this increase is only about 15 percent less than the increase caused by an equivalent amount of gasoline. Soybean biodiesel does better, causing a greenhouse gas increase that is about 40 percent less than that from petroleum diesel.

In Brazil, ethanol made from sugar cane produces about twice as much ethanol per acre as corn. Brazilian ethanol refineries get much of their power from burning cane residue, in effect recycling carbon from the atmosphere. The environmental benefit is large. Sugar-cane ethanol grown on established soils releases 80 percent less greenhouse gases than gasoline.

But that isn't the case for sugar-cane ethanol or soybean biodiesel from Brazil's newly cleared lands, including tropical forests and savannas. Clearing land releases immense amounts of greenhouse gases into the air, because much of the material in the plants and soil is broken down into carbon dioxide.

Plants and soil contain three times more carbon than the atmosphere. The trees and soil of an acre of rainforest -- which, once cleared, is suitable for growing soybeans -- contain about 120 tons of organic carbon. An acre of tropical woodland or savanna, suitable for sugar cane, contains about half this amount. About a fourth of the carbon in an ecosystem is released to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide when trees are clear-cut, brush and branches are burned or rot, and roots decay. Even more is lost during the first 20 to 50 years of farming, as soil carbon decomposes into carbon dioxide and as wood products are burned or decay.

This means that when tropical woodland is cleared to produce sugar cane for ethanol, the greenhouse gas released is about 50 percent greater than what occurs from the production and use of the same amount of gasoline. And that statistic holds for at least two decades.

Simply being "renewable" does not automatically make a fuel better for the atmosphere than the fossil fuel it replaces, nor guarantee that society gains any new energy by its production. The European Union was recently shocked to learn that some of its imported biodiesel, derived from palm trees planted on rain-forest lands, was more than twice as bad for climate warming as petroleum diesel. So much for the "benefits" of that form of biodiesel.

Although current Brazilian ethanol is environmentally friendly, the long-term environmental implications of buying more ethanol and biodiesel from Brazil, a possibility raised recently during President Bush's trip to that country, are cloudy. It could be harmful to both the climate and the preservation of tropical plant and animal species if it involved, directly or indirectly, additional clearing of native ecosystems.

Concerns about the environmental effects of ethanol production are starting to be felt in the United States as well. It appears that American farmers may add 10 million acres of corn this year to meet booming demand for ethanol. Some of this land could come from millions of acres now set aside nationwide for conservation under a government-subsidized program. Those uncultivated acres absorb atmospheric carbon, so farming them and converting the corn into ethanol could release more carbon dioxide into the air than would burning gasoline.

There are biofuel crops that can be grown with much less energy and chemicals than the food crops we currently use for biofuels. And they can be grown on our less fertile land, especially land that has been degraded by farming. This would decrease competition between food and biofuel. The United States has about 60 million acres of such land -- in the Conservation Reserve Program, road edge rights-of-way and abandoned farmlands.

In a 10-year experiment reported in Science magazine in December, we explored how much bioenergy could be produced by 18 different native prairie plant species grown on highly degraded and infertile soil. We planted 172 plots in central Minnesota with various combinations of these species, randomly chosen. We found, on this highly degraded land, that the plots planted with mixtures of many native prairie perennial species yielded 238 percent more bioenergy than those planted with single species. High plant diversity led to high productivity, and little fertilizer or chemical weed or pest killers was required.

The prairie "hay" harvested from these plots can be used to create high-value energy sources. For instance, it can be mixed with coal and burned for electricity generation. It can be "gasified," then chemically combined to make ethanol or synthetic gasoline. Or it can be burned in a turbine engine to make electricity. A technique that is undergoing rapid development involves bioengineering enzymes that digest parts of plants (the cellulose) into sugars that are then fermented into ethanol.

Whether converted into electricity, ethanol or synthetic gasoline, the high-diversity hay from infertile land produced as much or more new usable energy per acre as corn for ethanol on fertile land. And it could be harvested year after year.

Even more surprising were the greenhouse gas benefits. When high-diversity mixtures of native plants are grown on degraded soils, they remove carbon dioxide from the air. Much of this carbon ends up stored in the soil. In essence, mixtures of native plants gradually restore the carbon levels that degraded soils had before being cleared and farmed. This benefit lasts for about a century.

Across the full process of growing high-diversity prairie hay, converting it into an energy source and using that energy, we found a net removal and storage of about a ton and a half of atmospheric carbon dioxide per acre. The net effect is that ethanol or synthetic gasoline produced from this grass on degraded land can provide energy that actually reduces atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.

When one of these carbon-negative biofuels is mixed with gasoline, the resulting blend releases less carbon dioxide than traditional gasoline.

Biofuels, if used properly, can help us balance our need for food, energy and a habitable and sustainable environment. To help this happen, though, we need a national biofuels policy that favors our best options. We must determine the carbon impacts of each method of making these fuels, then mandate fuel blending that achieves a prescribed greenhouse gas reduction. We have the knowledge and technology to start solving these problems.

Al Gore Excerpt With House & Senate Committee: March 21, 2007

"I promise you--I say this to each of you as individuals--I promise you a day will come when our children and grandchildren will look back and they'll ask one of two questions. Either they will ask, "What in God's name were they doing? Didn't they see the evidence? Didn't they realize that four times in 15 years the entire scientific community of this world issued unanimous reports calling upon them to act. What was wrong with them? Were they too blinded and numb with the busyness of political life or daily life to take a deep breath and look at the reality of what we're facing? Did they think it was perfectly alright to keep dumping 70 million tons every single day of global warming pollution into this earth's atmosphere? Did they think all the scientists were wrong? What were they thinking? Or, they'll ask another question. They may look back and they'll say, "How did they find the uncommon moral courage to rise above politics and redeem the promise of American democracy?" And do what some said was impossible and shake things up. And tell the special interest, "Okay, we've heard you and we're going to do the best we can to take your considerations into account, but we're going to do what's right." I'm going to do my part to make sure that you have all the support that I and lots of other folks can muster for you in both parties. When you do the right thing."

- Al Gore, March 21, 2007

Check out another nice post from Grist

Corn-based ethanol's a flawed concept

Corn-based ethanol's a flawed concept
February 16, 2007 -- By Myra P. Saefong, MarketWatch

Ethanol as an alternative energy source is a flawed concept -- at least when corn is used to produce it.

And the consequences of using corn to create ethanol are far-ranging - they even impact consumers and the price they pay for meat.

So is it worth it? It depends who you ask.

"There have been numerous studies completed regarding the energy efficiency of ethanol vs. its production," said John Eichberger, vice president of government relations for the National Association of Convenience Stores.

"These range from a positive net energy return in excess of 30% to a negative net energy return of more than 30%," he said. "Researchers on both sides of the issue argue that the other research is significantly flawed."

Even so, policymakers insist that ethanol is a "positive replacement product for crude-oil based fuels and have proceeded down a path to subsidize and mandate its use," said Eichberger, whose trade organization represents the convenience and petroleum-retailing industry.

There's no doubt that renewable fuels are a good idea, said Darin Newsom, a senior analyst at Omaha, Nebraska-based DTN. "That means putting more research into more efficient ways" of making them.

That said, "corn is a short-term end to the means."

Invest energy to get energy

"Some of the warts associated with ethanol production are [real] -- it does use a lot of water, electricity and natural gas," said Newsom.

So "the problem with corn-based ethanol is that, at best, you don't get more energy out of it than it costs to grow and make it," said Sean Brodrick, a contributing editor at MoneyandMarkets.com.

"At worst, you lose energy."

A math and science lesson is in order.

An easy-to-read measure of whether ethanol's economically viable can be derived from taking a look at its "energy return on energy invested," or EROI, according to Brodrick.

"It is at the crux of why corn-based ethanol is a boondoggle," he said.

EROI can be expressed as "net energy," he explains. The EROI for corn-based ethanol is 1.2:1, so the net energy is 0.2, he said.

That means you put in 1 British thermal unit to get 1.2 BTUs from it, he said.

"At EROI of 1.2 to 1, the 3.9 billion gallons that the U.S. produced in 2005 required 3.29 billion gallons of BTU energy input, resulting in a 'net energy' of 610 million gallons," he said.

And that's being generous, he said. "There are some computations that show corn-based ethanol has a net energy of zero. Others show it as a net energy loser."

So it all depends on how you look at it.

A "break even" with the cost of production would be largely based on the cost of crude oil and the cost of corn, said Rick Kment, an analyst at DTN.

For example, if crude-oil prices are at $70 to $100 per barrel, very high corn prices can be paid and ethanol can still economically work in the system, he said.

But with $30 crude and $4 corn, "it becomes unprofitable," he said.

At current price levels, DTN estimates a net profit -- after depreciation and all other factors -- to be near 5 cents per gallon of ethanol produced, he said.

That's down from a 50-cent per gallon net profit at the first of the year, and down from $2.50 a gallon in June 2006, Kment said.

March crude-oil futures closed Thursday at $57.99 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while March corn futures were trading around a 10-year high above $4 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade. And March ethanol stood at $2.08 a gallon on the CBOT.

'Dead argument'

Still, there are many more experts who say there's really no question as to whether corn-based ethanol puts out more than it uses up.

"The argument over the energy balance of ethanol is really a dead argument," said Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association, the national trade group for the ethanol industry. "Study after study has proven them [the critics] to be flat out wrong," he said.

Hartwig called attention to the Web site for the biomass conversion research laboratory at Michigan State University.

A Feb. 5 note on the site prepared by Bruce Dale, professor of chemical engineering at the university, said the net energy analysis is "simple and has great intuitive appeal," with net energy defined as ethanol's heating value minus the fossil energy inputs required to produce the ethanol.

But "it is also dead wrong and dangerously misleading."

Tadeusz Patzek, professor of civil & environmental engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, said in a report last year that the "energy cost of producing and refining carbon fuels in real time, e.g., corn and ethanol, is high relative to that of fossil fuels deposited and concentrated over geological time."

"We do not value energy per se, but rather the services or 'qualities' that the energy provides," argued Dale.

"We need to carefully choose our metric of comparison," he said.

One gallon of ethanol contains 84,000 BTUs, which is about 2/3 that of gasoline, according to Neil Koehler, chief executive of Pacific Ethanol Inc.

"Since ethanol burns more completely (and cleanly) than gasoline, this lower energy density can be completely offset by increased efficiency," he said.

It's eating at corn

But ethanol's impact on the corn market has been "dramatic," said DTN's Newsom.

"If ethanol demand increases to projected levels, corn supplies will be incredibly low at the end of the 2006-2007 marketing year in August 2007," he said.

The U.S. produced an estimated 4.9 billion gallons of ethanol last year and used more than 5.5 billion, according to the Renewable Fuel Association's Hartwig. Ethanol is blended in more than 46% of the nation's gasoline, he said.

"It would seem that the corn market is poised for a long-term rally in price," said Newsom. He predicts that the high of $5.54 a bushel from 1996 seems like a "reasonable price target."

Meanwhile, limitation in the corn market itself should be considered.

"Corn-based ethanol will be of limited supply," said Charles Perry, chairman of energy-consulting firm Perry Management. The U.S has a limited amount of productive land so we "can spare only a limited amount of our corn crop for ethanol."

At the same time, this corn use for ethanol has been "hampering feeding, with some talk in the livestock industry of herd reduction due to higher feed costs," said Newsom.

"Our food prices will go through the roof -- $4-$5 corn makes for very expensive beef, pork and chicken," said Bernie Feshbach, president of investment firm Feshbach & Sons.

Also, "the use of corn makes ethanol a regional (Midwest) issue as the U.S. lacks the infrastructure to move the product around to meet demand," said Newsom.

But the logistics involved with ethanol production could be irrelevant.

"More attention needs to be paid to the personal economics of ethanol since many consumers are more concerned with cost, than with how a fuel is derived," said Geoff Sundstrom, a spokesman for motorist group AAA.

The industry will get a chance to discuss all of these things soon. The Renewable Fuels Association's 12th annual National Ethanol Conference is next week from Feb. 19-21 in Tucson, Ariz.

The group's Web site says registration for the conference is closed because it's reached its capacity. Interested parties are being placed on a waiting list.

Food Miles May Be Green, But Are They Fair?

Food Miles May Be Green, But Are They Fair?
February 7, 2007 -- By Kate Kelland, Reuters via ENN

LONDON -- Supermarkets are scrambling to capture the millions of "green" pounds spent by increasingly environmentally aware shoppers.

Farmers' markets across the country are buzzing with conscientious customers buying locally grown knobbly carrots and leeks pulled straight from the soil.

With the threat of climate change racing up the global political agenda, Britons are going green when they shop. And their sights are set on food miles.

"The concept of food miles has absolutely rightly entered into people's consciousness in Britain," says Bill Vorley, head of the sustainable markets group at the British International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) think-tank.

The idea of reducing food miles seems straightforward -- simply buy produce which has travelled the shortest possible distance from farm to plate.

However, just as British consumers' enthusiasm to cut food miles is growing, some experts are warning that an over-simplistic view of the issue risks doing more harm than good.

They are urging policymakers not to rush blindly into formulating "buy-local-only" campaigns for consumers which could prove disastrous for many poor African food producers.

"I'm an advocate of local food, and I do think we need to re-localise our food procurement rather than hauling it up and down the motorways," says Vorley.

"But we are warning against allowing environmental arguments to trump the case for development -- especially when it guides decisions by policymakers or consumers that are going to have very little impact on our overall carbon footprint."

STRAWBERRIES AND SCHOOL RUNS

According to Britain's National Consumer Council (NCC) about 10 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions associated with British food transport come from air-freighted goods.

In a recent paper, the NCC said the carbon damage from air-freighting just one small punnet of New Zealand strawberries to Britain was equivalent to the CO2 emissions from 11 average school runs, made by parents driving their children to school.

The problem, experts say, is that consumers keen to do their bit for the environment but as yet unaware of the complexities of the debate are shopping with a simplistic "local good, foreign bad" attitude.

As long as the apples, carrots, broccoli and leeks are produced in Britain, they can be bought in abundance with a clear conscience, the thinking goes. But if the label says they come from Israel, Kenya or New Zealand, only a carbon criminal would dare take them to the checkout.

However, some argue that fair miles, not food miles, should be the criterion by which consumers judge the contents of their shopping trolleys. Specifically, fresh fruit and vegetables from sub-Saharan Africa, on which Britons spend more than a million pounds a day, should be considered more carefully.

"Many products which come to us from Africa are giving some of the poorest people in some of the poorest countries in the world a chance to earn a decent living," said Harriet Lamb, executive director of the Fairtrade Foundation, an independent certification body that guarantees poor producers in the developing world a fair price for their goods.

"People have to be careful in assessing the carbon footprint of a product, because it may well be that some products (from Africa) may actually have a smaller carbon footprint and a greater social impact than the same product grown in commercial greenhouses in Britain or the Netherlands."

A MILLION LIVELIHOODS

Lamb and Vorley warn consumers against feeling a false sense of environmental virtue if they avoid air-freighted products.

Cutting out products from sub-Saharan Africa would reduce Britain's overall contribution to global carbon dioxide emissions by just 0.1 percent, they say.

"And it's something like a million livelihoods that depend on us (in Britain) enjoying fresh fruit and vegetables from sub-Saharan Africa," says Lamb. "Let's make sure we're not making poor people in poor countries pay the price."

According to Stephen Mbugua, vice-chairman of the Fresh Produce Exporters Association of Kenya, that is not happening yet, but it is a great fear for the future.

"So far so good, we've not had any serious impact from this, (but) if there was a serious campaign, it certainly would affect our sales," he told Reuters in Nairobi.

Lamb quotes John Kanjangaile, export manager of a group in Tanzania called the Kagera Cooperative Union (KCU), speaking at a public meeting in Britain where he was asked about the potential environmental damage caused by his export business.

His reply was unequivocal: "With the deepest respect, the farmers in the villages where I come from don't have televisions, they don't have refrigerators, they don't have even one car, let alone two, they don't have motorbikes, they've never even been to our country's capital let alone flown all over the world on holiday -- so don't ask those farmers to pick up the cost of environmental problems you in the industrialised West have caused."

Make Green Pay, Davos 2007: CNBC video

Make Green Pay is a discussion coordinated by CNBC at this years Davos meetings. The link provided will take you to the video for the entire program. The topics discussed are as follows:

MOTION 1: Nuclear energy and cleaner coal are the only workable alternatives to oil

James Rogers, President and Chief Executive Officer of Duke Energy argues for the motion that nuclear energy and cleaner coal are the only workable alternatives to oil. Today’s needs can only be met with today’s resources he says. Mr Rogers sees emission-free nuclear and advanced-coal technologies as the energy workhorses for the short-to medium term. Vinod Khosla, Founder and Partner of Khosla Ventures argues against the motion puts forward the case against the motion. He focuses on the hidden costs of nuclear and coal – the clean-up costs. Factor those in, he insists, and clean renewables start to look a whole lot more competitive.



MOTION 2: Markets are superior to regulation in leading corporations towards greener operations

In the board rooms and in the corridors of power there is increasing acknowledgement that the way in which we consume energy is damaging the earth. For most corporations though, changing attitudes are yet to translate into radically different practices. Reverend Nicholas Frances, Chief Executive Officer of Easy Being Green, puts forward the case for motion 2; that markets are the most effective influence on company behaviour. He says that a government’s ability to regulate will always lag the entrepreneur’s talent to innovate. Professor Daniel Esty, Hill House Professor at Yale University puts forward an opposing view. Professor Esty argues that business must be motivated to find solutions. Regulation, he points out, gives business the stability required for the risks associated with policy changes.



MOTION 3: A global carbon tax would do more harm than good

Professor Jose Goldemberg of Sao Paulo University reminds us that the developing world is unlikely agree to sacrifice economic development for an environmental agenda. He not only says that a global tax would do more harm than good but that to even aim for one would be unrealistic. Sir Nicholas Stern of the UK treasury and author of the Stern review stands against the motion. According to Sir Nicholas, companies must face with the full social cost of their actions and that, in economic terms, a common global carbon price would be the most efficient way of achieving this.

Grassroot Environmentalism Shifting American Policy

Waking up and catching up
January 25, 2007 -- The Economist

Belatedly, and for many reasons, America is embracing environmentalism

WHEN Jim Webb, the new Democratic senator from Virginia, replied to George Bush's state-of-the-union message, he could bear to endorse only one of the president's proposals. This was the idea of cutting America's petrol (gasoline) consumption by 20% in ten years, by increasing ethanol production to 35 billion gallons a year and raising fuel-efficiency standards for cars.

Such a plan would reduce America's dependence on imported oil from dangerous places (as would Mr Bush's plan to double the country's petroleum reserves). But it would address global warming only tangentially. The Democrats in Congress are weighing much more dramatic measures, including across-the-board cuts to the greenhouse gases that are heating up the planet. At the state level, politicians of all stripes are already taking more radical steps. Even big business is coming round. Mr Bush may be dragging his feet, but America is greening fast.

The Democrats' victory in last year's elections means that Congress's stance on environmental issues has changed dramatically. In one race for the House of Representatives, a Democratic consultant on wind power defeated a Republican ally of the oil industry. Barbara Boxer, an ardent advocate of firm action on climate change, has taken over the chairmanship of the Senate Environment Committee from James Inhofe, who often described global warming as “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”.

Since Congress convened earlier this month, the Democrats have got to work fast. The House has passed a bill that would eliminate a tax break for oil production in America, and would impose penalties on firms that refuse to renegotiate the absurdly generous leases the government accidentally granted them in the late 1990s. The proceeds—perhaps $15 billion over the next decade—would be used to fund renewable energy schemes.

Nancy Pelosi, the new speaker of the House, is now turning her attention to global warming. She is setting up a committee to address both that issue, and America's dependence on imported fuel. She wants to see legislation before July 4th, so that she can declare “energy independence” on the same day that the founding fathers severed political ties with Britain.

Meanwhile, some half-dozen bills on global warming are circulating in the Senate. Several propose cap-and-trade schemes, whereby the government would create a fixed number of permits to produce greenhouse gases and then auction them or allocate them to businesses. Firms without enough permits to cover their emissions would either have to pollute less, or buy up spare ones from firms that had managed to cut back.

John McCain, a leading Republican presidential candidate, and Joe Lieberman, a former Democratic one, are behind the most prominent cap-and-trade scheme. Barack Obama, one of the Democrats' current presidential aspirants, is a co-sponsor. It is the most ambitious of the bills with serious backing: it would cut carbon emissions to 2004 levels by 2012 and then mandate further reductions of 2% a year until 2020. Although these targets are less onerous than those of the Kyoto protocol, the United Nations' treaty on climate change, most analysts reckon they will prove too exacting for Congress.

An alternative cap-and-trade scheme, sponsored by Jeff Bingaman, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, suffers from the opposite problem: excessive modesty. His plan would aim to slow the growth of emissions, and ultimately stabilise them at their 2013 level by 2020. It includes a safety valve, under which the government would automatically issue more permits to pollute if the price of those permits rose too far. The economic impact would be much smaller than under the McCain-Lieberman plan but so, too, would the reductions in emissions.

Dianne Feinstein, a Democratic senator from California, is proposing a third approach. She wants to create cap-and-trade mechanisms within industries rather than across the economy as a whole. She has, for instance, proposed legislation that would cut power companies' emissions by 25% of their projected levels by 2020.

All these initiatives face an uphill battle. The previous Senate rejected the McCain-Lieberman plan twice—by a bigger margin the second time around. Any bill that involves mandatory caps on greenhouse-gas emissions would need 60 of the chamber's 100 votes to succeed, since Mr Inhofe has pledged to filibuster all such measures. In the House the Energy Committee is chaired by John Dingell, a Democrat from the carmaking hub of Detroit who has long opposed mandatory caps. Mr Dingell, who says Ms Pelosi's new committee is “as useful as feathers on a fish”, will still have a big say in any legislation. And even if a bill overcomes all these obstacles, it would risk a presidential veto.

A matter of security
But whatever the fate of these proposals, the political climate is changing faster than the weather. Almost all the leading presidential candidates favour emissions caps. One of them, Hillary Clinton, has condemned the Bush administration's failure to act as “unAmerican”. That is a remarkable change since 2000, when Al Gore toned down his environmental rhetoric during his presidential campaign for fear of sounding pious and obsessive. Indeed, activists are so convinced that the next president will be greener than Mr Bush that they are debating whether to settle for immediate but modest measures on global warming, or wait for a new administration to take bolder steps.

The Democrats have always been the greener party, but environmentalism is budding among Republicans too. Take Saxby Chambliss, a moderate senator. He voted against the McCain-Lieberman bill in 2005, but changed his mind after visiting Greenland to view the melting ice cap. “There really is something to it,” he now says.

Many factors lie behind the party's shift. Most have to do not with sudden sentimentality in the face of Nature, but with national security (a motivation that lies, too, behind Ms Pelosi's new committee and Mrs Clinton's patriotic posturing). Fiscal hawks fret about the impact of growing oil imports on the dollar. Military types fear global conflict for dwindling resources in the event of catastrophic global warming. Neoconservatives worry about America's dependence on oil imports from unstable if not openly hostile countries in Latin America and the Middle East. Some think the solution is simply to pump more oil at home, but others argue that America needs to move away from oil altogether. One such figure, Jim Woolsey, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, pointedly drives a Toyota Prius, a famously fuel-efficient car.

At the same time, a growing number of evangelical Christians are beginning to see global warming as a moral issue. They argue that mankind, as steward of God's creation, has a duty to protect the environment. One outfit, the Evangelical Climate Initiative, encourages prominent pastors and theologians to sign a “Call to Action”. Another group, the Evangelical Environmental Network, runs a website called “What would Jesus drive?” Last year Pat Robertson, a prominent televangelist, told his flock, “We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels.”

The Republican Party has a strong, albeit fitful, tradition of environmentalism. Teddy Roosevelt expanded America's national parks. Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Mr Bush's father, when he was president, signed off on America's first nationwide cap-and-trade scheme to control emissions of the gases that cause acid rain.

But the strongest force propelling environmentalism among Republicans is self-preservation. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the decidedly green governor of California, was one of the few luminaries in the party unaffected by last year's electoral meltdown. Republicans in other western states, where a Democratic tide is rising and a pristine landscape is a major tourist attraction, are following Mr Schwarzenegger's moves with interest. They fear the party may lose ground with moderate middle-class types who dislike urban sprawl and unfettered oil-drilling.

The destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 had a big influence on voters, according to Jonathan Lash of the World Resources Institute. Americans seem to view the increasing incidence of freakish weather as proof that climate change is real. Many of them paid to see Mr Gore's film on the subject, making it the third-most-successful documentary of all time (and now a candidate for an Oscar). Polls show that Americans are gradually growing more exercised about global warming, although they are still less anxious than Europeans or Japanese.


The business view
Even big business, which stands to lose most from stricter environmental regulation, is beginning to accept that change is in the air. Exxon Mobil, led until recently by a fierce sceptic of global warming, now concedes that there is a problem, and that its products are contributing to it. Last year four-fifths of utility executives polled by Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consultancy, expected mandatory emissions caps within a decade.

If regulation is indeed on its way, many firms would like Congress to fix the rules sooner rather than later, to help them plan investments in factories and power plants with long lifespans. Earlier this week ten companies, including Alcoa, Caterpillar and DuPont, called for Congress to set up a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases as quickly as possible. Since most of the firms involved produce clouds of emissions, they would obviously like to influence future legislation.

But the firms' bosses claim to see emissions caps as an opportunity, not a threat. GE, a member of the group, wants its executives to use their “ecomagination”. By the same token Rick Wagoner, the head of GM, the world's biggest carmaker, recently hoped aloud that oil prices would remain high, so that his firm would keep its incentive to develop fuel-efficient cars. Wal-Mart, America's biggest retailer, hopes to double its sales of low-watt lightbulbs.

Lots of firms are growing healthily on the back of America's sudden enthusiasm for alternative energy. Americans invested almost $30 billion in the sector in 2006, according to New Energy Finance, a research firm. American venture capitalists lavish seven times more on greenery than their counterparts in Europe. Ethanol production was expected to double in the next few years, even before the latest boost from Mr Bush. Wind and solar power are also booming. And the bigger green firms become the more influence they will have over politicians.


States to the fore
At the very least, businesses want to avoid a patchwork of conflicting local regulations on environmental matters in general, and greenhouse-gas emissions in particular. There is already a bit of a muddle, since several states have taken much bolder and more experimental steps than the federal government. California, the boldest of all, has taken on carmakers, electricity companies and the EPA, to name a few. Its politicians vie to out-green one another. Some 40 of its legislators drive hybrid cars. Mr Schwarzenegger, not to be bested, has converted one of his fuel-swigging Hummers to run on hydrogen.

Congress may be thinking about tackling greenhouse-gas emissions, but California has already done it. Its Global Warming Solutions Act, which was passed last year, aims to cut them to 1990 levels by 2020—an ambitious target for a state that has grown rapidly in the past 15 years and will probably continue to do so. The details have yet to be fleshed out, but the reductions will come from both a cap-and-trade scheme for industry and regulations of various sorts.

Mr Schwarzenegger issued the first such regulation earlier this month, obliging producers of petrol and other fuels to cut the emissions of carbon dioxide from their products by 10% by 2020—presumably by mixing in more ethanol and other biofuels. It is not California's first attempt to reduce emissions from transport: its legislature voted for stringent cuts in 2002. That move has become snarled in a court battle over whether states have the right to set fuel-economy standards. Meanwhile, the politicians keep trucking. In September, the state showily sued six car manufacturers, alleging they had damaged its climate. It is also suing the EPA, for failing to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions.

California's politicians are keen on renewables too. State law requires utilities to generate 20% of the power they sell from sources such as windmills and biomass plants by 2010, and 33% by 2020. Solar power has won even greater favour: under the “million solar roofs” scheme, the state plans to spend more than $3 billion over the next decade subsidising the installation of solar-power panels.

California has also pioneered the practice of “decoupling”, which deprives power firms of their incentive to sell as much electricity as possible. Instead, the local regulator has devised a formula to reward firms whose sales are lower than expected, and to allow the recovery of the costs of energy-efficiency schemes.

Such measures (along with high power prices to pay for them) have helped California rein in its electricity consumption—although lovely weather and a relative lack of heavy industry have also played a part. Power use per person has remained roughly stable in the state since the 1970s, even as it has doubled in the rest of the country. As a result, California's greenhouse-gas emissions per person are on a par with those of Denmark. Relative to the size of its economy, they are lower.

But California is not America's only green enclave. Nine states in the north-east have combined to reduce emissions from power generation through a cap-and-trade scheme. Two of them plan to auction all the permits, unlike the countries in the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme, which handed them out for nothing. Ten states have signed up to follow California's standards on car exhaust, including its requirements on greenhouse gases. Many more promote ethanol, or renewables, or energy-efficient buildings.

On the whole, left-leaning states are keener on greenery than right-wing ones, which tend to be more energy-intensive. But politicians of all stripes in the Midwest are keen to promote ethanol for the sake of local farmers, who grow the corn from which it is made. And Texas recently overtook California as the country's biggest generator of wind power.

Greenery is also popular at the local level. Almost 400 cities have devised plans to curb or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Many buy only fuel-efficient cars for their municipal fleets. Laura Miller, the mayor of Dallas, has spoken out against the plans of local utilities to build 17 new coal-fired power plants. What is the point of her city buying police cars fuelled by natural gas, she asks, when they will soon be overshadowed by clouds of soot?

Despite all this grassroots environmentalism, America remains the biggest contributor to global warming, accounting for roughly a fifth of all the world's emissions. The federal government's recalcitrance on the subject remains the biggest obstacle to an effective global scheme to tackle the problem. But whereas in Europe or Asia new ideas often flow from the centre to the regions, in America the states are the incubators of big shifts in policy. This means that change is coming—fast.