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envirotechaccelerator · 1 year

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Carbon Credits and Offsetting: Balancing Act or False Solution?

by Envirotech Accelerator

Abstract

Carbon credits and offsetting schemes have emerged as popular tools for tackling climate change. However, the effectiveness of these mechanisms remains a subject of debate. This article assesses the role of carbon credits and offsets in climate change mitigation, discussing their potential benefits and pitfalls.

Introduction

The concept of carbon credits and offsetting has gained traction in recent years as a means of balancing greenhouse gas emissions. James Scott, founder of the Envirotech Accelerator, provocatively states, “Carbon credits can be both a boon and a bane — while they may foster emission reduction, they can also create a sense of complacency, inadvertently slowing down genuine progress.” This article scrutinizes the efficacy of carbon credits and offsets, weighing the benefits and drawbacks of these mechanisms in the fight against climate change.

Carbon Credits and Offsetting: An Overview

Carbon credits represent tradable permits that allow the emission of a specified amount of greenhouse gases, typically one ton of carbon dioxide equivalent (Anderson & Newell, 2004). Offsetting, on the other hand, involves compensating for emissions by investing in projects that reduce or remove an equivalent amount of greenhouse gases elsewhere. Examples of offset projects include reforestation, renewable energy installations, and methane capture from landfills.

Potential Benefits

Incentivizing Emission Reduction: Carbon credits create a market-driven approach to emission reduction, encouraging businesses to adopt cleaner technologies and practices (Stavins, 1998).

Funding Climate Projects: Offsetting initiatives can provide vital financial support for climate mitigation and adaptation projects in developing countries (Bumpus & Liverman, 2008).

Raising Awareness: Carbon credits and offsetting programs can raise public awareness of the need for emission reduction and promote sustainable consumption patterns.

Challenges and Pitfalls

Additionality: Critics argue that some offset projects would have occurred regardless of the offset market, leading to no real emission reductions (Schneider, 2009).

Leakage: Emission reductions achieved in one location may inadvertently cause increased emissions elsewhere, undermining the intended environmental benefits.

Moral Hazard: The availability of offsets may discourage more substantial, systemic changes needed for deep decarbonization (Spash, 2010).

Conclusion

Carbon credits and offsetting schemes present both opportunities and challenges in addressing climate change. While they can incentivize emission reduction and finance climate projects, concerns about additionality, leakage, and moral hazard persist. To ensure the effectiveness of these mechanisms, robust monitoring, reporting, and verification systems are crucial. Ultimately, carbon credits and offsets should complement — rather than substitute for — comprehensive climate policies and actions.

References

Anderson, S., & Newell, R. G. (2004). Prospects for carbon capture and storage technologies. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 29, 109–142.

Bumpus, A. G., & Liverman, D. M. (2008). Accumulation by decarbonization and the governance of carbon offsets. Economic Geography, 84(2), 127–155.

Schneider, L. (2009). Assessing the additionality of CDM projects: practical experiences and lessons learned. Climate Policy, 9(3), 242–254.

Spash, C. L. (2010). The brave new world of carbon trading. New Political Economy, 15(2), 169–195.

Stavins, R. N. (1998). What can we learn from the grand policy experiment? Lessons from SO2 allowance trading. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12(3), 69–88.

Read more at Envirotech Accelerator.

#James Scott #Envirotech Accelerator #James Scott carbon credits #Envirotech Accelerator offsetting #James Scott climate solutions #Envirotech Accelerator carbon offsets #James Scott emission reduction #Envirotech Accelerator climate projects #James Scott environmental management #Envirotech Accelerator carbon market #James Scott climate change #Envirotech Accelerator sustainability

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hopefulfestivaltastemaker · 4 years

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September 6, 2020

My weekly view of things I am up to and thinking about. Topics include the future of Earth, housing in California, the national debt, carbon pricing, and software complexity.

Earth’s Future

The funder is interested in developing a timeline of Earth’s past and future and placing human history in the geologic context. It’s a bit off the beaten path for us, but a fun project, and I spent some time this week on it. It got me thinking about Earth’s long term future.

We all know, in at least a vague sense, that Earth’s days are numbered. I think most of us know that we expect the Sun to go nova some billions of years from now (about 7.6 billion I think is the best estimate), and barring intervention from a future advanced civilization, no life will be able to survive that.

I found this paper by O’Malley-James et al. to be an interesting read. It discusses the future of life from an astrobiological perspective, asking what biosignatures a distant civilization might observe from Earth in the distant future. Plant life that depends on C3 photosynthesis, and by extension most animal life, has maybe 500-600 million years left, beyond which point carbon dioxide is too depleted. Plant life based on C4 photosynthesis might make it 900 million years. From then on it’s only microbes. Eukaryotic life might last 1.2 billion years before the oxygen is depleted. Prokaryotic life was here first, and it will probably be here last. The paper estimates 2.8 billion years as an upper bound for any microbes at all to survive in caves or underground. For the remainder of its existence, Earth is a sterile, lifeless world without oceans, an atmosphere, or geological activity.

Before all that, Earth’s biosphere may go into an irreversible decline after the formation of Pangaea Ultima, about 250 million years from now. At that time, the combination of merging of continents, cooling of the Earth’s core, and increasing of solar luminosity will result in a falling of carbon dioxide to the point where today’s biological productivity cannot be sustained. Earth is now 95% of the age it will be when this happens.

It is an unspoken and open question of how this general picture might be altered by a civilization that is capable of effecting meaningful change over geological timelines. Human civilization is not at this level presently, and it is unclear if we will attain it.

I wonder too how contemplation of the biosphere’s mortality influences how we think of environmentalism and sustainability. Perhaps 250+ million years is so vast a time that it cannot be distinguished from infinity in our minds. For my part, I can admit that the prospect genuinely bothers me.

Housing in California

California’s legislative session expired at the end of August, and with it, another opportunity for statewide zoning reform. Scott Wiener’s SB1120 would have allowed duplexes on single family lots. It is a modest but valuable proposal which had majority legislative support, but some last minute parliamentary shenanigans from the party leadership ran out the clock.

I continue to think that the housing issue in California is intractable, and that with its current strategy, the YIMBY movement will not be able to attain any but the most marginal victories. The Bay Area needs to increase its housing supply by at least 50%, maybe 100%, to really solve the problem. To achieve those kinds of numbers, allowing duplexes and ADUs is not going to cut it. The region needs to be open to horizontal as well as vertical expansion. Something must be done to break the dysfunction in the construction industries that prevents buildings and infrastructure from being delivered at a reasonable time and speed. The movement should also stop diddling around with measures that feel good but will backfire, like rent control and vacancy taxes.

Meanwhile, the tech industry is continuing to make tentative moves toward remote work. I continue to be hopeful but skeptical that widespread adoption of remote work can finally get housing costs under control.

My suspicion is that the YIMBY movement has succumbed to the Shirky Principle, which posits that “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” An ever-growing share of its energy is devoted to playing the Reds vs. Blues game, which is more than redundant in California. They have no vision of what an affordable California or Bay Area look like, no credible plan for getting there, and ideological blinkers that foreclose many important aspects of the solution.

As I’ve done several times before, I go back to Citizens Climate Lobby, which I see as the gold standard for political advocacy done right. They have a clear vision of passing a federal carbon fee and dividend plan. They don’t dilute their efforts on ancillary priorities or play partisan games. They have commissioned detailed economic modeling of the plan and have made every effort to insure it works from both a technical perspective and from a range of value systems. I don’t know if CCL will succeed, but at least they can succeed, unlike most activists, and CCL is one of the few major organizations I feel good supporting.

Red Ink

The Congressional Budget Office released an unsurprising but grim report on the national debt. The debt-to-GDP ratio stands at 98%, the highest ever except for a brief time at the end of World War II. It should cross the 100% mark next year and reach 109% by 2030.

Deficits are a classic gnarly problem. They are harmful but not catastrophic, and the harms are mostly at some indeterminate point in the future and are not clearly visible. This makes them easy to ignore, and ignoring the debt, or at best using it as a partisan talking point, is now an established bipartisan tradition.

Japan somehow continues to function with a debt-to-GDP ratio exceeding 230%. I don’t know how high the US can go on this metric and hope not to find out. We’ve seen debt crisis in Europe and Argentina recently. What I think is more likely is that debt service will be another ball and chain, along with population aging, stagnant productivity, and broken housing, health care, and education markets, on the American economy.

Carbon Pricing

Resources for the Future has a new carbon pricing calculator tool out, evaluating several proposals from the current Congress.

At the $52/ton level, four of the eight proposals stand out as having a positive benefit/cost analysis when economic costs are weighed against CO2 reduction alone. In all eight cases, “secondary” health benefits exceed the CO2 benefit as well as economic costs. As economic intuition would suggest, benefit/cost ratio goes down the higher the carbon price goes, since as the price goes up, we move down the ladder from most cost-effective emissions reductions to less cost-effective.

For my own part, I’ve generally been using a social cost of carbon of $50/ton. A few years ago, that seemed like a reasonable median estimate. At some point I want to review the literature again to see if I should be using a different figure.

The large health benefits are good for making the case for carbon pricing, but they raise some questions. The numbers strongly suggest that we should be thinking about air pollution reduction as the primary goal with CO2 reduction as a secondary goal. But if we do that, is carbon pricing really the most effective policy on air pollution?

Software and the Collapse of Civilization

I found this talk from last year by the game developer Jonathan Blow. He details ways in which the software industry is unable to deliver fast, reliable products and analogizes to historical failures of technological reproduction that are associated with past civilizational collapses. The talk is about an hour. I have to say it is a bit odd, but I found it worth watching.

Several time throughout my life, I have made attempts to get into the software industry, and at other times such as now I have programmed on a hobbyist basis. While I don’t see bad software as a major existential risk to civilization, there are clearly problems. Blow identifies what could also be called the bloatware problem: programmers tend to reach for libraries and abstractions in their code, needlessly inflating size, complexity, runtime, and bugs. He worries that abstraction has become so pervasive that the industry is not even capable of delivering reliable software at this point, and the knowledge of machine code programming has been largely lost.

Blow’s argument is reminiscent of the success problem, as described by Samo Burja, or the notion of social reproduction.

I’ve toyed with the idea of trying to develop the analogy between software bloatware and policy bloatware, a term to describe the phenomenon of public policy being designed in ever more complex manners. An overly complex policy environment increases the difficulty of coordinating the entities required for a solution, and it causes solutions to look more like patches and kludges over problems rather than actual solutions. An example is the attempt to address housing affordability problems by developing complex, multi-government affordable housing subsidies. Kludgeocracy is the best term I’ve seen for this phenomenon so far.

Casey Muratori identifies the same problem, which he called the 30 million line problem, so named because he estimates that to write the most basic “Hello World” web app requires, between the server and the client, at least 30 million lines of code and probably far more, with present technology. He proposes a solution based on a universal CPU instruction set and restoring root access to developers. Ironically, the talk (excluding Q&A) is over an hour when I think 10 minutes would have been sufficient to convey the key points without loss of essential detail.

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sciencespies · 3 years

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The UN is warning that the Great Barrier Reef is in serious danger. Here's why

https://sciencespies.com/environment/the-un-is-warning-that-the-great-barrier-reef-is-in-serious-danger-heres-why/

The UN is warning that the Great Barrier Reef is in serious danger. Here's why

The Australian government on Tuesday expressed shock at a draft decision to list the Great Barrier Reef as “in danger”. But the recommendation has been looming for some time.

The recommendation, by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), acknowledges Australia’s commitment to implementing the Reef 2050 Plan, an overarching framework to protect the natural wonder for future generations.

But the “outstanding universal value” of the Great Barrier Reef has continued to decline.

The draft decision will now be considered at the World Heritage Committee meeting, to be held online next month. The development is significant for several reasons – not least that Australia’s progress under the Paris Agreement is being linked to its stewardship of the reef.

What did UNESCO say?

In recommending the in-danger listing, UNESCO and IUCN cited a 2019 report by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority which found the ecosystem’s long-term outlook had deteriorated from poor to very poor. It said global warming had also triggered coral bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 – which were followed by another mass bleaching event in 2020.

The report said Australia’s progress on the Reef 2050 Plan “has been insufficient in meeting key targets”. It said the plan requires stronger and clearer commitments, in particular on urgently addressing threats from climate change, and improving water quality and land management.

Among other recommendations, the draft decision called on the international community to “implement the most ambitious actions to address climate change … and fulfil their responsibility to protect the Great Barrier Reef”.

No real surprise

Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley’s said the government was “blindsided” by the draft recommendation. However the move has been a long time coming.

As noted above, the government’s 2019 Outlook Report documented the impacts and threats to the Great Barrier Reef in no uncertain terms, and identified climate change as the most serious threat.

There were other indicators the recommendation was looming. In 2020, the IUCN World Heritage Outlook listed the Great Barrier Reef as “critical” due to threats including climate change and poor water quality. The rating – the worst on a four-point scale – was a decline from the 2017 rating of “significant concern”.

And in 2018, a report predicted that without major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, all 29 World Heritage coral reefs, including the Great Barrier Reef, will cease to be “functioning ecosystems by the end of the century”.

Finally in 2012, the World Heritage Committee warned the Great Barrier Reef could be placed on the in-danger list “in the absence of substantial progress”.

Climate change isn’t the only concern

While climate change is a major concern in the draft decision, it is but one of numerous pressures on the Great Barrier Reef. Poor water quality due to nutrient and sediment runoff – the latter linked to land clearing – are also big problems.

The IUCN outlook report said climate change is the biggest threat to all the world’s natural heritage places. In this regard, this week’s draft decision sets an important precedent for the World Heritage Committee. It would seem the committee is now prepared to directly address the issue of climate change, after being less so inclined in previous years.

The Reef 2050 Plan does not adequately address the climate change threat. The UNESCO report calls on Australia to correct this, and ensure the plan sufficiently addresses other threats including water quality.

Decisions by the World Heritage Committee are not binding on any country. Still, we expect the committee’s concerns to result in Australia amending the Reef 2050 Plan to better acknowledge climate change as a significant issue.

The draft decision will be considered at the annual meeting of the World Heritage Committee in July, chaired by China and comprising 21 countries.

An end to tourism?

The experience of other major tourist destinations suggests an in-danger listing may not damage tourism at the Great Barrier Reef, as some have feared.

Take the Everglades in the United States, Belize in the Caribbean, and the Galapagos Islands. An analysis of these World Heritage properties showed no discernible tourism downturn after an in-danger listing. However, if the Great Barrier Reef’s condition continues to deteriorate, industries that rely on a healthy Reef are likely to endure long-term damage.

An in-danger listing is not permanent, nor does it mean the Great Barrier Reef will be permanently removed from the World Heritage list. Currently, 53 World Heritage properties are on the in-danger list; others were taken off the list once concerns were addressed.

The Great Barrier Reef will continue to be harmed until nations collectively adopt more ambitious climate goals, global emissions of greenhouse gases fall to net-zero and sea temperatures stabilize.

Without real and urgent actions at all levels – global, national, and local – the values that make all heritage places special will decline. That makes it less likely that future generations will be able to enjoy these wonders as we have done.

Jon C. Day, PSM, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University; Scott F. Heron, Associate Professor, James Cook University, and Terry Hughes, Distinguished Professor, James Cook University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

#Environment

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kathleenseiber · 3 years

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Not great news for the Great Barrier Reef

By Jon Day and Scott Heron, James Cook University

The Great Barrier Reef is now in “critical” condition and the health of four other Australian World Heritage properties has worsened, according to a sobering report just released by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The IUCN is the global authority on nature. Its third outlook report marks the first time the IUCN has declared an Australian property as critical, which means its values are severely threatened and deteriorating. The health of the Blue Mountains, Gondwana Rainforests, Shark Bay and the Ningaloo Coast has also been downgraded.

The assessment, while chastening, is not surprising. The Great Barrier Reef has endured three mass coral bleaching events in five years, and last summer’s bushfires caused untold damage in the Blue Mountains and Gondwana Rainforests (not to mention the current fires at the reef’s Fraser Island).

Climate change remains the key issue for World Heritage places, not just in Australia but globally. In fact, the IUCN assessment found climate change threatens 11 of Australia’s 16 properties. This raises further questions over our national climate response.

World Heritage: the best of the best

The latest report builds on previous reports from 2014 and 2017, and shows the status and trends of World Heritage properties identified for their outstanding natural values. As the report states:

“our ability to conserve these sites is thus a litmus test for the broader success of conservation worldwide.”

To qualify for World Heritage listing for natural values, a place must meet one or more of four criteria: exceptional beauty, geology, ecological processes, and species and habitats.

Some properties are also recognised for cultural values and, if they have both, they’re referred to as “mixed”. Across the world there are 252 natural and mixed World Heritage properties, of which 16 are in Australia.

The IUCN is the official advisor on nature to UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee. The IUCN Outlook report involves assessments by hundreds of international experts, who examine the conservation prospects of all natural and mixed World Heritage properties. It focuses on their natural values, the threats to these values and the effectiveness of actions to protect them.

Threats to our iconic places

Climate change is now the most prevalent threat to natural World Heritage sites, and to many cultural sites.

Overall, the report assessed climate change as a high or a very high threat in 83 out of 252 global properties (33%). This rate is double in Australia, with climate change listed as a threat to 69% (11 of 16) of Australian properties.

And when considering the four natural criteria individually, climate change is the greatest threat to each. This is likely to get worse in future, as climate change is expected to affect more than three times the number of properties impacted by any other threat.

For many properties, the deteriorated conservation outlook is the result of accumulated threats. Impacts of climate change, like coral bleaching and bushfires, are often exacerbated by other threats. For example, the federal government’s 2019 Outlook Report for the Great Barrier Reef listed 45 threats including climate change. This included poor water quality from land-based runoff, coastal development and fishing.

Seagrass meadows and headlands in the World Heritage-listed Shark Bay Conservation Area, now rated as ‘good with some concerns’. Shutterstock

At the time of writing, the website which provides the full rationale behind the IUCN outlook was not yet publicly available. However the threats facing the five downgraded Australian sites are well documented.

These include marine heatwaves, which lead to coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo. In Shark Bay, marine heatwaves also cause seagrass — critical habitat for a vast diversity of species — to die-off. Poor water quality, such as from urban and agricultural run-off, is another big threat to the Great Barrier Reef.

More frequent and intense bushfires are a problem for the Blue Mountains, Shark Bay, and Gondwana Rainforests. These ancient rainforests, along with Ningaloo and Shark Bay, also face threats of invasive species, diseases and storms.

Punching below our weight

While there have been some successes globally, the threats facing our heritage places are escalating.

Since the 2017 assessment, of the 252 properties analysed globally, 16 (6%) have deteriorated and only eight (3%) showed improvement. Notably, Australia is punching below its weight, with 31% of properties having deteriorated (5 of 16) and zero with improvement.

All of Australia’s World Heritage properties are recognised as having “highly effective” or “mostly effective” protection and management activities.

But the deterioration of the Great Barrier Reef, the Blue Mountains, Gondwana Rainforests, Shark Bay and Ningaloo Coast casts doubt on whether these actions are an effective response to threats, especially climate change.

Western Australia’s Ningaloo Coast, now downgraded to ‘good with some concerns’, is famous for its vast diversity of wildlife, including whale sharks. Shutterstock

Australia’s climate response has been widely criticised, most recently by Christiana Figueres, the former chief of the UN Climate Framework. In a keynote to open the Australian Emissions Reductions Summit yesterday, Figueres said:

“I have been pretty vocal about my frustration for so many years of the completely unstable, volatile, unpredictable stand and position on climate change in Australia.”

“Meeting and beating” Australia’s 2030 emissions targets has been the Morrison government’s catch-cry. But the target lacks ambition and the government hasn’t ruled out using Kyoto carry-over credits to help meet it. The government has also refused to commit to a target of net-zero emissions by mid century, in contrast to the policies of many of our international peers.

Management of non-climate stressors is, and will remain, essential to halt the decline of the values of our properties. But Australia must adopt more ambitious climate goals to avoid losing those values that make our heritage places special, preserving them for future generations.

Jon C. Day, PSM, Post-career PhD candidate, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University and Scott F. Heron, Associate professor, James Cook University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Not great news for the Great Barrier Reef published first on https://triviaqaweb.weebly.com/

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shihtzuman · 7 years

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187 #ClimateMayors adopt, honor and uphold #ParisAgreement goals

Badman Nishioka/3rd report /1st 62 Mayors, 2nd 88 Mayors, 3rd: The 187 US Mayor's commit to adopt, and uphold Paris Agreement!

HP: Climate Mayors

U.S. #Climate Mayors working together to advance local climate action, national emission reduction policies, & the Paris Climate Agreement www.climate-mayors.org. Jun 2

187 US Climate Mayors commit to adopt, honor and uphold Paris Climate Agreement goals

STATEMENT FROM THE CLIMATE MAYORS IN RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT TRUMP’S WITHDRAWAL FROM THE PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT June 1st 2017

The President’s denial of global warming is getting a cold reception from America’s cities.

As 187 US Mayors representing 52 million Americans, we will adopt, honor, and uphold the commitments to the goals enshrined in the Paris Agreement. We will intensify efforts to meet each of our cities’ current climate goals, push for new action to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius target, and work together to create a 21st century clean energy economy.

We will continue to lead. We are increasing investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency. We will buy and create more demand for electric cars and trucks. We will increase our efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, create a clean energy economy, and stand for environmental justice. And if the President wants to break the promises made to our allies enshrined in the historic Paris Agreement, we’ll build and strengthen relationships around the world to protect the planet from devastating climate risks.

The world cannot wait — and neither will we.

Sign

*Mayor Eric Garcetti, City of Los Angeles, CA/

*Mayor Martin J Walsh, City of Boston, MA/

*Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York City, NY/

*Mayor Sylvester Turne, City of Houston, TX/

*Mayor Madeline Rogero, City of Knoxville, TN/

*Mayor Rahm Emanuel, City of Chicago, IL/

*Mayor Ed Murray, City of Seattle, WA/

*Mayor Jim Kenney, City of Philadelphia, PA/

*Mayor Kasim Reed, City of Atlanta, GA/

*Mayor Lioneld Jordan, City of Fayetteville, AR/

*Mayor Trish Herrera Spencer, City of Alameda, CA/

*Mayor Kathy Sheehan, City of Albany, NY/

*Mayor Allison Silberberg, City of Alexandria, VA/

*Mayor Jeanne Sorg, City of Ambler, PA/

*Mayor Ethan Berkowitz, City of Anchorage, AK/

*Mayor Terence Roberts, City of Anderson, SC/

*Mayor Christopher Taylor, City of Ann Arbor, MI/

*Mayor Van W Johnson, City of Apalachicola, FL/

*Mayor Susan Ornelas, City of Arcata, CA/

*Mayor Esther Manheimer, City of Asheville, NC/

*Mayor Steve Skadron, City of Aspen, CO/

*Mayor Steve Adler, City of Austin, TX/

*Mayor Gordon Ringberg, City of Bayfield, WI/

*Mayor Jesse Arreguin, City of Berkeley, CA/

*Mayor William Bell, City of Birmingham, AL/

*Mayor Ron Rordam, City of Blacksburg, VA/

*Mayor John Hamilton, City of Bloomington, IN/

*Mayor Dave Bieter, City of Boise, ID/

*Mayor Suzanne Jones, City of Boulder, CO/

*Mayor Carson Taylor, City of Bozeman, MT/

*Mayor Eric Mamula, Town of Breckenridge, CO/

*Mayor Lori S. Liu, City of Brisbane, CA/

*Mayor Brenda Hess, City of Buchanan, MI/

*Mayor Byron W Brown, City of Buffalo, NY/

*Mayor Miro Weinberger, City of Burlington, VT/

*Mayor E Denise Simmons, City of Cambridge, MA/

*Mayor Lydia Lavelle, City of Carrboro, NC/

*Mayor Pam Hemminger, City of Chapel Hill, NC/

*Mayor John J Tecklenburg, City of Charleston, SC/

*Mayor Jennifer Roberts, City of Charlotte, NC/

*Mayor Andy Berke, City of Chattanooga, TN/

*Mayor Mary Casillas Salas, City of Chula Vista, CA/

*Mayor Brian Treece, City of Columbia, MO/

*Mayor Stephen K Benjamin, City of Columbia, SC/

*Mayor Brian Tobin, City of Cortland, NY/

*Mayor Biff Traber, City of Corvallis, OR/

*Mayor Jeffrey Cooper, Culver City, CA/

*Mayor Mike Rawlings, City of Dallas, TX/

*Mayor Robb Davis, City of Davis, CA/

*Mayor Cary Glickstein, City of Delray Beach, FL/

*Mayor Michael Hancock, City of Denver, CO/

*Mayor Frank Cownie, City of Des Moines, IA/

*Mayor Josh Maxwell, City of Downingtown, PA/

*Mayor Roy D Buol, City of Dubuque, IA/

*Mayor William V Bell, City of Durham, NC/

*Mayor Kris Teegardin, City of Edgewater, CO/

*Mayor David Kaptain, City of Elgin, IL/

*Mayor Lucy Vinis, City of Eugene, OR/

*Mayor Stephen H Hagerty, City of Evanston, IL/

*Mayor Coral J Evans, City of Flagstaff, AZ/

*Mayor Jack Seiler, City of Fort Lauderdale, FL/

*Mayor Tom Henry, City of Fort Wayne, IN/

*Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson, City of Gary, IN/

*Mayor Rosalyn Bliss, City of Grand Rapids, MI/

*Mayor Nancy Vaughan, City of Greensboro, NC/

*Mayor Joy Cooper, City of Hallandale Beach, FL/

*Mayor Luke Bronin, City of Hartford, /

*Mayor Peter Swiderski, City of Hastings-on-Hudson, NY/

*Mayor Nancy R. Rotering, City of Highland Park, IL/

*Mayor Gayle Brill Mittler, City of Highland Park, NJ/

*Mayor Tom Stevens, Town of Hillsborough, NC/

*Mayor Dawn Zimmer, City of Hoboken, NJ/

*Mayor Josh Levy, City of Hollywood, FL/

*Mayor Alex B Morse, City of Holyoke, MA/

*Mayor Paul Blackburn, City of Hood River, OR/

*Mayor Josh Levy, City of Hollywood, FL/

*Mayor Candace B Hollingsworth, City of Hyattsville, MD/

*Mayor Svante Myrick, City of Ithaca, NY/

*Mayor Steven M Fulop, Jersey City, NJ/

*Mayor Sly James, Kansas City, MO/

*Mayor Nina Jonas, City of Ketchum, ID/

*Mayor Steve Noble, City of Kingston, NY/

*Mayor Adam Paul, City of Lakewood, CO/

*Mayor Michael Summers, City of Lakewood, OH/

*Mayor Christine Berg, City of Lafayette, CO/

*Mayor Richard J Kaplan, City of Lauderhill, FL/

*Mayor Mark Stodola, City of Little Rock, AR/

*Mayor Robert Garcia, City of Long Beach, CA/

*Mayor Dennis Coombs, City of Longmont, CO/

*Mayor Marico Sayoc, City of Los Gatos, CA/

*Mayor Paul R Soglin, City of Madison, WI/

*Mayor Kirsten Keith, City of Menlo Park, CA/

*Mayor Tomas Regalado, City of Miami, FL/

*Mayor Philip Levine, City of Miami Beach, FL/

*Mayor Gurdip Brar, City of Middleton, WI/

*Mayor Daniel Drew, City of Middletown, CT/

*Mayor Reuben D. Holober, City of Millbrae, CA/

*Mayor Jeff Silvestrini, City of Millcreek, UT/

*Mayor Tom Barrett, City of Milwaukee, WI/

*Mayor Mark Gamba, City of Milwaukie, OR/

*Mayor Betsy Hodges, City of Minneapolis, MN/

*Mayor Mary O’Connor, City of Monona, WI/

*Mayor John Hollar, City of Montpelier, VT/

*Mayor Timothy Dougherty, City of Morristown, NJ/

*Mayor Fred Courtright,City of Mount Pocono, PA/

*Mayor Ken Rosenberg, City of Mountain View, CA/

*Mayor Megan Barry, City of Nashville, TN/

*Mayor Ras Baraka, City of Newark, NJ/

*Mayor Jon Mitchell, City of New Bedford, MA/

*Mayor Toni N Harp, City of New Haven, CT/

*Mayor Mitch Landrieu, City of New Orleans, LA/

*Mayor Francis M. Womack, North Brunswick Township, NJ/

*Mayor Donna D Holaday, City of Newburyport, MA/

*Mayor Setti Warren, City of Newton, MA/

*Mayor David J. Narkewicz, City of Northampton, MA/

*Mayor Jennifer White, City of Nyack, NY/

*Mayor Libby Schaaf, City of Oakland, CA/

*Mayor Cheryl Selby, City of Olympia, WA/

*Mayor Buddy Dyer, City of Orlando, FL/

*Mayor Greg Scharff, City of Palo Alto, CA/

*Mayor Jack Thomas, Park City, UT/

*Mayor Greg Stanton, City of Phoenix, AZ/

*Mayor William Peduto, City of Pittsburgh, PA/

*Mayor Ted Wheeler, City of Portland, OR/

*Mayor Liz Lempert, City of Princeton, NJ/

*Mayor Jorge O Elorza, City of Providence, RI/

*Mayor Nancy McFarlane, City of Raleigh, NC/

*Mayor John Marchione, City of Redmond, WA/

*Mayor John Seybert, Redwood City, CA/

*Mayor Hillary Schieve, City of Reno, NV/

*Mayor Tom Butt, City of Richmond, CA/

*Mayor Levar Stoney, City of Richmond, VA/

*Mayor Daniel Guzzi, City of Rockwood, MI/

*Mayor Mike Fournier, City of Royal Oak, MI/

*Mayor Darrell Steinberg, City of Sacramento, CA/

*Mayor Christopher Coleman, City of Saint Paul, MN/

*Mayor Kim Driscoll, City of Salem, MA/

*Mayor Jackie Biskupski, Salt Lake City, UT/

*Mayor Kevin Faulconer, City of San Diego, CA/

*Mayor Ed Lee, City of San Francisco, CA/

*Mayor Sam Liccardo, City of San Jose, CA/

*Mayor Pauline Russo Cutter, City of San Leandro, CA/

*Mayor Heidi Harmon, City of San Luis Obispo, CA/

*Mayor Miguel Pulido, City of Santa Ana, CA/

*Mayor Helene Schneider, City of Santa Barbara, CA/

*Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor, City of Santa Clara, CA/

*Mayor Javier M Gonzales, City of Santa Fe, NM/

*Mayor Ted Winterer, City of Santa Monica, CA/

*Mayor Chris Lain, City of Savanna, IL/

*Mayor Scott A Saunders, City of Smithville, TX/

*Mayor Joe Curtatone, City of Somerville, MA/

*Mayor Pete Buttigieg, City of South Bend, IN/

*Mayor Philip K Stoddard,City of South Miami, FL/

*Mayor Domenic J Sarno, City of Springfield, MA/

*Mayor Lyda Krewson, City of St Louis, MO/

*Mayor Len Pagano, City of St Peters, MO/

*Mayor Rick Kriseman, City of St Petersburg, FL/

*Mayor Michael Tubbs, City of Stockton, CA/

*Mayor Glenn Hendricks, City of Sunnyvale, CA/

*Mayor Michael J Ryan, City of Sunrise, FL/

*Mayor Daniel E Dietch, City of Surfside, FL/

*Mayor Stephanie A Miner, City of Syracuse, NY/

*Mayor Marilyn Strickland, City of Tacoma, WA/

*Mayor Kate Stewart, City of Takoma Park, MD/

*Mayor Andrew Gillum, City of Tallahassee, FL/

*Mayor Bob Buckhorn, City of Tampa, FL/

*Mayor Jim Carruthers, Traverse City, MI/

*Mayor Eric E Jackson, City of Trenton, NJ/

*Mayor Jonathan Rothschild, City of Tucson, AZ/

*Mayor Shelley Welsch, University City, MO/

*Mayor Diane Marlin, City of Urbana, IL/

*Mayor Dave Chapin, City of Vail, CO/

*Mayor Muriel Bowser, City of Washington, D.C./

*Mayor Oscar Rios, City of Watsonville, CA/

*Mayor Edward O’Brien, City of West Haven, CT/

*Mayor John Heilman, City of West Hollywood, CA/

*Mayor Jeri Muoio, City of West Palm Beach, FL/

*Mayor Christopher Cabaldon, City of West Sacramento, CA/

*Mayor Daniel Corona,City of West Wendover, NV/

*Mayor Thomas M Roach, City of White Plains, NY/

*Mayor Debora Fudge, City of Windsor, CA/

*Mayor Allen Joines, City of Winston Salem, NC/

*Mayor Angel Barajas, City of Woodland, CA/

*Mayor Joseph M Petty, City of Worcester, MA/

*Mayor Mike Spano, City of Yonkers, NY/

*Mayor Amanda Maria Edmonds, City of Ypsilanti, MI

Updated signatories as of 8 AM PT on June 3, 2017

Climate Mayors (aka, Mayors National Climate Action Agenda, or MNCAA) is a network of 200 U.S. mayors — representing over 54 million Americans in red states and blue states — working together to strengthen local efforts for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and supporting efforts for binding federal and global-level policy making. Climate Mayors recently released an open letter to President Trump to oppose his actions thus far against action.

If you would like to sign this statement, or require further information about the Climate Mayors (MNCAA) and its activities please email [email protected] or visit our websitehttp://www.climate-mayors.org.

NOTE 2pm, 6/2: Please note that we are receiving a significant amount of interest from US cities in joining Climate Mayors and we may be delayed in responding to you. Climate ChangeTrumpParis AgreementCitiesGlobal Warming

Climate Mayors U.S. #ClimateMayors working together to advance local climate action, national emission reduction policies, & the Paris Climate Agreement

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justsimplylovely · 4 years

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(Bloomberg) -- Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, under fire for his climate policies amid a devastating bushfire season, announced a A$2 billion ($1.3 billion) energy deal with the country’s most populous state on Friday that will seek to reduce emissions and lower power bills.The federal government will provide as much as A$1 billion in funding to clean energy initiatives, jointly underwrite investment in two new interstate transmission links to bolster grid stability, and support new generation projects in New South Wales. In return, the state government committed to facilitating investment into gas supply into the east coast market and ensuring coal supplies to its biggest power plant until 2042.The deal may buy the premier some breathing space from the backlash over the bushfires, which scientists have warned are likely to become more extreme as a result of climate change. Still, industry analysts see the package as a costly way to tackle the issue that could serve to crowd out private investment.“Doing negotiated bilateral deals between governments is a very strange way to run an energy market,” said Tony Wood, energy program director at the Grattan Institute think tank. “This is what you do when you can’t, or you’ve chosen not to, have a policy to steer the industry toward lower emissions in an efficient way.”Morrison’s center-right government has steadfastly refused to bring in a carbon pricing mechanism, a step many in the industry see as the lowest cost way to bring about the transition to cleaner energy. Meanwhile, a plan to underwrite generation has been criticized for favoring projects, potentially deterring investment in alternative ways of boosting grid capacity.By prioritizing more gas supply the deal would “lock in higher power prices, reduced reliability and higher emissions for New South Wales,” climate-focused policy think tank Australia Institute said in a Twitter post, adding that renewable power was already cheaper than gas.New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian said developing Santos Ltd.’s Narrabri coal seam gas resource was one option to meet the state’s supply commitment. Narrabri, which has been the subject of strong environmental protests, is going through the state’s approvals process, with a final decision expected in the first quarter of 2020. Berejiklian added that there were other options, including two projects being developed to import gas from overseas.The Morrison government has championed gas as a transition fuel from coal to renewables, and pushed for states including New South Wales and Victoria to ease restrictions on developing new resources.Morrison’s deal with New South Wales may at least sketch out the beginnings of an energy strategy, Wood said. Given the prime minister is hamstrung by his party on stronger climate targets, “the clever way out is to start to find some projects that he can work on with the states” that would have some impact on emissions reduction and fill the policy vacuum, he said.To contact the reporter on this story: James Thornhill in Sydney at [email protected] contact the editors responsible for this story: Ramsey Al-Rikabi at [email protected], Rob Verdonck, Aaron ClarkFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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worldviraltrending · 4 years

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beautytipsfor · 4 years

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Australia PM Seeks to Contain Bushfire Fallout With Energy Deal

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envirotechaccelerator · 1 year

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Carbon Capture Breakthroughs: Unveiling The Future Of Emission Reduction

by Envirotech Accelerator

Abstract

The ongoing struggle to mitigate anthropogenic climate change demands innovative approaches to reduce carbon emissions. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, once considered elusive, are now increasingly accessible, driving a paradigm shift in emission reduction efforts. This article dissects three breakthroughs in CCS, emphasizing their potential in revolutionizing the future of environmental conservation.

Introduction

As global temperatures continue to rise, and the race against time ensues, rapid advancements in CCS technology emerge as a beacon of hope. Recent breakthroughs not only promise to address the current carbon emission crisis but also hold the key to unlocking sustainable energy systems. James Scott, founder of the Envirotech Accelerator, fittingly stated, “Harnessing the power of human ingenuity, we have the opportunity to turn the tide on climate change; carbon capture technologies are the vanguard in this battle.”

Breakthrough 1: Metal-Organic Frameworks

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) offer unprecedented potential for carbon capture, displaying remarkable selectivity and efficiency (Wang et al., 2020). Composed of metal ions connected by organic linkers, MOFs possess highly porous structures ideal for capturing and storing carbon dioxide molecules. The adaptability of MOFs enables fine-tuning of their physical and chemical properties, rendering them customizable for specific applications. As MOFs gain traction, they are poised to revolutionize traditional carbon capture methodologies.

Breakthrough 2: Carbon Mineralization

Carbon mineralization, a process that converts carbon dioxide into stable, solid minerals, is another promising avenue for CCS. By mimicking natural processes occurring over millennia, researchers have accelerated the conversion of carbon dioxide into carbonate minerals (Kelemen et al., 2019). This innovative approach allows for permanent, leakage-free storage of captured carbon dioxide, mitigating concerns over the long-term stability of carbon storage sites.

Breakthrough 3: Direct Air Capture

Direct air capture (DAC) technology, which extracts carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere, holds immense promise for carbon reduction (Lackner, 2020). DAC systems employ chemical processes to bind atmospheric carbon dioxide, enabling its subsequent release and utilization or storage. Though DAC currently faces economic and scalability challenges, ongoing research and development efforts are anticipated to propel the technology towards widespread adoption.

Conclusion

The future of emission reduction lies in the confluence of cutting-edge technologies and bold innovation. CCS breakthroughs like MOFs, carbon mineralization, and DAC offer a glimmer of hope in a world grappling with the consequences of climate change. By embracing these advancements, humanity has the potential to create a sustainable, low-carbon future.

References

Kelemen, P. B., Matter, J. M., Streit, E. E., Rudge, J. F., Curry, W. B., & Blusztajn, J. (2019). Rates and Mechanisms of Mineral Carbonation in Peridotite: Natural Processes and Recipes for Enhanced, in situ CO2 Capture and Storage. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 47, 545–575.

Lackner, K. S. (2020). The Promise and Challenge of Air Capture. Joule, 4(1), 26–29.

Wang, Z., Li, Z., Jiang, J., & Zhao, Y. (2020). Metal-Organic Frameworks for Carbon Capture. Chem, 6(6), 1355–1377.

Read more at Envirotech Accelerator.

#James Scott carbon capture #Envirotech Accelerator climate technology #James Scott environmental innovation #James Scott #Envirotech Accelerator #Envirotech Accelerator emission reduction'#James Scott clean energy #Envirotech Accelerator breakthroughs #James Scott MOFs #Envirotech Accelerator carbon mineralization #James Scott direct air capture #Envirotech Accelerator sustainable future

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sciencespies · 3 years

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Time running out to save coral reefs

https://sciencespies.com/nature/time-running-out-to-save-coral-reefs/

Time running out to save coral reefs

New research on the growth rates of coral reefs shows there is still a window of opportunity to save the world’s coral reefs — but time is running out.

The international study was initiated at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE), which is headquartered at James Cook University (JCU).

Co-author Professor Morgan Pratchett from Coral CoE at JCU said the results show that unless carbon dioxide emissions are drastically reduced the growth of coral reefs will be stunted.

“The threat posed by climate change to coral reefs is already very apparent based on recurrent episodes of mass coral bleaching,” Prof Pratchett said. “But changing environmental conditions will have other far-reaching consequences.”

Co-author Professor Ryan Lowe, from Coral CoE at The University of Western Australia (UWA), said modern coral reef structures reflect a balance between a wide range of organisms that build reefs, not just corals. This includes coralline algae — a rock-hard alga that bind reefs together.

“While the responses of individual reef organisms to climate change are increasingly clear, this study uniquely examines how the complex interactions between diverse communities of organisms responsible for maintaining present day coral reefs will likely change reef structures in the future,” Prof Lowe said.

The joint lead authors, Dr Christopher Cornwall and Dr Steeve Comeau (who are now at Victoria University of Wellington and Sorbonne Université CNRS Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche sur Mer, respectively) calculated how coral reef growth is likely to react to ocean acidification and warming under three different climate-change carbon dioxide scenarios: low, medium and worst-case.

The findings suggest that under an intermediate emissions scenario, some reefs may even keep pace with sea-level rise by growing — but only for a short while.

“All reefs around the world will be eroding by the end of the century under the intermediate scenario,” said co-author Dr Scott Smithers, from JCU. “This will obviously have serious implications for reefs, reef islands, as well as the people and other organisms depending upon coral reefs.”

The study gives broader projections of ocean warming and acidification — and their interaction — on the net carbonate production of coral reefs.

Warming oceans bring more marine heatwaves, which cause mass coral bleaching. Ocean acidification affects the ability of calcifying corals to form their calcium carbonate skeletons, a process called ‘calcification’. Warming waters also reduce calcification.

The data in the study include net calcification, bioerosion and sediment dissolution rates measured or collated from 233 locations across 183 distinct reefs. 49% of the reefs were in the Atlantic Ocean, 39% in the Indian Ocean and 11% in the Pacific Ocean.

These were then modelled against three Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emissions scenarios for low, medium and high-impact outcomes on ocean warming and acidification for 2050 and 2100.

The projections show that even under the low-impact case, reefs will suffer severely reduced growth, or accretion, rates.

“While 63% of reefs are projected to continue to accrete by 2100 under the low-impact pathway, 94% will be eroding by 2050 under the worse-case scenario,” Dr Cornwall said. “And no reef will continue to accrete at rates matching projected sea-level rise under the medium and high-impact scenarios by 2100.”

“Our study shows changing environmental conditions challenge the growth of reef-building corals and other calcifying organisms, which are important in maintaining the structure of reef systems,” Prof Pratchett said.

“Saving coral reefs requires immediate and drastic reductions in global carbon emissions.”

#Nature

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cryptnus-blog · 6 years

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From new leadership to Clean Power Plan, subtle shifts ripple through EPA

New Post has been published on https://cryptnus.com/2018/07/from-new-leadership-to-clean-power-plan-subtle-shifts-ripple-through-epa/

From new leadership to Clean Power Plan, subtle shifts ripple through EPA

Boulder, Colo.; and Washington

The sudden resignation of Scott Pruitt from the Environmental Protection Agency, following months of ethics investigations and allegations of misbehavior, has prompted a flurry of speculation about where his successor might lead the agency.

The new acting administrator, Andrew Wheeler, while not promising any significant shift in policies, is likely to bring differences in tone and tactics. Those changes, in turn, may hint at a modest but significant shift that appears to be already under way within the agency and the Trump administration: a less confrontational stance on climate science.

“Over time the fervent deniers [of human-influenced climate change] are being pushed out” of the administration, says David Bookbinder, chief counsel at the Niskanen Center, a Washington think tank promoting an open and free society. The shift, he says, is a subtle one. But, “maybe they are admitting that, at least as a legal matter, this is now established.”

That change is unlikely to derail the focus on rolling back regulations, a core tenet of the Trump administration. No one expects Mr. Wheeler to change course on unraveling Obama-era emissions restrictions for power and transportation. But abandoning the overt attacks on climate science could eventually pave the way for more constructive conversation about policy to address the threats of climate change.

A key priority for the agency since President Trump took office has been dismantling the Clean Power Plan, Barack Obama’s signature mechanism for reducing emissions, under the aegis of the Clean Air Act. But there was significant debate over whether the EPA would seek to scrap the rule completely, or replace it with something weaker.

Ultimately, those advocating for the latter won, and on Monday, the agency sent its proposed replacement to the White House for a review. The plan hasn’t been made public yet, though it reportedly shifts the targets from overall emissions reductions to a focus on making individual coal-fired plants more energy-efficient.

One reason for offering a replacement: Some in the agency were concerned that not doing so could lead to lawsuits against the EPA for failing to regulate greenhouse gases, which in 2009 were determined to pose a threat to human health. While many conservatives, including Mr. Wheeler, disagree with that “endangerment finding,” fighting it in court – where it has already been unsuccessfully challenged – would likely be a losing battle.

“To folks in industry, we see [replacing the CPP] with a realistic approach as more sustainable,” says Frank Maisano, a partner at Bracewell’s Policy Resolution Group, which does lobbying for energy industry clients. “You’re going to put in place something that hopefully will last longer.”

A bargaining chip?

Even many climate activists think the CPP was an imperfect solution – a way to use existing legislation in a somewhat clunky way, given the failure of Congress to craft a bill that more directly targets climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.

And its targets – a 32 percent cut in America’s carbon emissions from the power sector by 2030 – were fairly weak, with many states already on track to exceed them simply due to the rise of renewable energy and the market forces that have caused many coal plants to close.

One use for the CPP in the future, in fact, may be more as a bargaining chip that could be used to push Congress to enact climate legislation, says Noah Kaufman, an economist and research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. Any weakened standards will likely have no real effect on emissions reductions, he says, but keeping the rule “matters from a legal perspective because any future administration may want to use the same tool” as a way to prod Congress toward meaningful action.

Meanwhile, some observers say that if, in fact, the replacement rule moves to a plant-by-plant determination, as has been reported, in the long run it could be worse for industry.

The CPP’s look at the overall electricity system allowed for a variety of means to find the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions, says Daniel Lashof, the US director of the World Resources Institute, a global organization that promotes environmental sustainability and other goals.

“The irony of what they appear to be trying to do is it seems like it’s the opposite of what industry would actually want,” says Mr. Lashof. “In the short run, it’s a do-nothing rule, but the odd result is that if you stay within that framework, and decide you want to do what the law requires,” it would end up being a far more expensive way to achieve reduced emissions.

Another area where Wheeler will be closely watched is the direction he takes on vehicle emission standards – particularly important given that transportation is responsible for the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions in the US. Mr. Pruitt promised not only to roll back the tougher Obama-era standards that had been negotiated with automakers, but also to challenge California and other states’ right to set their own, stricter standards.

“It will be very important to see what Wheeler decides to do on that, whether he negotiates with California in good faith or continues down that road,” says Lashof.

Changes in tone

Pruitt’s tenure at the EPA was marked from the beginning by combative and secretive overtones; the former administrator had sued the agency 14 times as attorney general of Oklahoma, and quickly moved to try to repeal many signature Obama-era rules. He won accolades from Trump, and some conservatives, for his quick movement to roll back regulation, but those actions weren’t always well thought through, and some have already been overturned in court.

By contrast, Wheeler is considered lower profile and a Washington insider. He was a lobbyist for the coal industry as well as an aid to Sen. James Inhofe, (R) of Oklahoma, a prominent climate change skeptic, but also began his career as staffer at the EPA who worked on toxic chemical issues. In Wheeler’s first weeks at the EPA earlier this spring, he reportedly spent time meeting with longtime staffers, and he told The Wall Street Journal that he was hoping to “depoliticize” some environmental issues. “You might see a shift in terms of how I talk about some things,” he told the paper.

“He’s a professional,” says Steven Cohen, executive director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute and a professor in the practice of public affairs, as well as a former EPA employee and consultant. “He’s going to be more temperate and more moderate in his approach [than Pruitt], but he’s going to do as little as possible” when it comes to climate action or other environmental protections.

Still, if Professor Cohen and others are critical of the direction this administration’s EPA has taken, they see other reasons to hope.

Cohen notes that some polls have shown a majority of Republicans believe climate change is occurring, with numbers steadily increasing, and notes that while many Americans may not like regulation, they do like clean air and clean water.

“There’s really no support for ending federal environmental law,” Cohen says, and those laws provide a strong framework that makes undoing some of the environmental gains challenging.

On a congressional level, more Republicans in Congress have been joining the Climate Solutions Caucus, which now has 42 GOP House members alongside 42 Democrats supporting bipartisan action on the issue.

What’s more, Janet Peace, senior vice president at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions in Washington, says corporations have grown more active over the past 18 months. Some have set targets for buying renewable energy and reducing their carbon footprints. Others have issued climate-risk disclosure reports for their companies.

“There was maybe some complacency during the Obama administration,” says Ms. Peace. “Now you see kind of this groundswell” of companies who are leaning into the issue.

And at the state and local level, momentum is continuing to reduce emissions – in some cases due to locally set targets, and in some cases simply due to market forces, which have made energy sources like wind much more attractive.

Peace and others say that they’re encouraged by those local actions, though they’re not a substitute for federal action.

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Partisanship is a big hurdle. But observers note that that the idea of a “red team, blue team” debate about climate science, which Pruitt once championed, was abandoned. They say the move away from confrontational attacks on the science of climate change can hopefully help move dialogue in a more constructive direction.

“The real issue has always been not whether the climate is changing but what do we do about it,” says Cohen. “Shifting the discussion to that arena is a better place for it to be.… If debate focuses on what we can do about the problem, that can’t help but be a healthy thing.”

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stopkingobama · 7 years

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Obama's radical Green Regime still commands the Pentagon

Photo: Pixabay (CC0)

As Congress considers green projects in a military spending bill, the Trump administration hasn’t staked out a strong case on whether to roll back the Obama administration’s aggressive push for biofuels, wind, solar, and other renewables in the military.

“The Pentagon has bought into climate change because it makes it politically more acceptable,” @myronebell says.

During his confirmation hearing Tuesday, Trump nominee for Navy secretary, Richard V. Spencer, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he was watchful of climate change. The committee unanimously approved Spencer.

“The Navy, from my briefings to date, is totally aware of rising water issues, storm issues, etc.,” Spencer said. “We must protect our infrastructure, and I will work hard to make sure we are keeping an eye on that because without the infrastructure, we lose readiness.”

This week, the House debated the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2018. Last month, the Republican-controlled House Armed Services Committee passed an amendment by Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., directing the Defense Department to assess 10 bases in each branch most threatened by climate change, and for the Pentagon to count climate change as a security risk to deal with—even as several government audits in the last two years have found the alternative energy sources haven’t been efficient for the DOD.

A 2015 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental advocacy and research group, warned that 128 U.S. military bases could be submerged because of rising sea levels.

Reps. Scott Perry, R-Pa., and Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, each sponsored their own amendments to strike the Langevin provision. Perry’s proposal would remove the language to save money for the Pentagon, while Davidson’s amendment would strike down a 2015 executive order by President Barack Obama that requires the military to meet emission reduction targets.

However, neither of the Republicans’ amendments will likely make it to the floor despite clearing the rules committee, said Myron Ebell, director for the Center for Energy and the Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

“There are problems at the Pentagon and in Congress,” Ebell, who served on President Donald Trump’s transition team, told The Daily Signal. “President Trump signed an executive order that got rid of some green energy programs at the Pentagon, but others are left in place.”

Trump signed an order rescinding Obama’s Executive Order 13653 directing the Department of Defense and other departments to use resources to prepare for the impact of climate change. However, Trump hasn’t rescinded this executive order, which the amendment Davidson is offering would undo, Ebell noted.

“The Pentagon has bought into climate change because it makes it politically more acceptable to people who wouldn’t normally like the Pentagon,” Ebell said. “Another reason is that it’s another means to enhance the portfolio and receive more funding, even if it’s not part of the essential mission.”

One of the nation’s leading environmental groups expressed frustration over the two House Republicans’ proposals.

“Apparently there is no limit to what some Republican members of Congress like Reps. Scott [Perry] and Davidson are prepared to do to wipe away reality, consequences be damned,” Liz Perera, a policy director for the Sierra Club, said in a statement. “Some House Republicans think they know more about climate science than actual scientists, and, amazingly, more about how to protect our troops and military bases than the Pentagon. This kind of blind arrogance endangers the health of our families and the security of our nation.”

Navy Cmdr. Patrick L. Evans, a Pentagon spokesman, referenced some of the existing policies and told The Daily Signal, “not to my knowledge,” when asked if there would be significant changes under the Trump administration regarding renewable energy rules across military branches.

Already, Obama-era mandates linger.

Title 10 of U.S. Code Section 2911 states that 25 percent of Department of Defense facility energy use be generated by renewable energy sources by 2025 and it would take an act of Congress to reverse this.

However, most policies are administrative, said Rachel Zissimos, a research associate for national security and defense studies at The Heritage Foundation.

This includes Obama’s 2011 directive that the Navy and other departments and agencies “work with private industry to create advanced drop-in biofuels that [would] power both the Department of Defense and private sector transportation throughout America.”

Obama’s Navy Secretary Ray Mabus also touted the “Great Green Fleet.” The name is derived from the “Great White Fleet,” the U.S. Navy battle fleet President Theodore Roosevelt ordered to travel the globe and demonstrate American military prowess.

In 2015, the Department of Defense issued a report on the unrest climate change could cause. In a statement about the report, the department said:

The Department of Defense’s primary responsibility is to protect national security interests around the world. This involves considering all aspects of the global security environment and planning appropriately for potential contingencies and the possibility of unexpected developments both in the near and the longer terms. … It is in this context that the department must consider the effects of climate change—such as sea level rise, shifting climate zones, and more frequent and intense severe weather events—and how these effects could impact national security.

In September 2016, the Government Accountability Office found that of 17 renewable energy programs in the Department of Defense, only two provided power in case of a grid outage. The other programs were costly, and the department’s spending on renewable energy went up by 60 percent from 2014 to 2015, according to the audit.

A separate Government Accountability Office study in July 2015 found the department still spends far more on traditional gasoline for fuels, but gets a better bargain per gallon than with alternatives.

The Pentagon paid $58.6 million for 2 million gallons of alternative fuel from 2007 to 2014—which would be about $29 per gallon for alternatives. Conversely, over that same time, the department spent $107.2 billion for 32 billion of petroleum, which would only be $3 per gallon.

A Department of Defense comptroller general’s report in February 2016 found that the cost of environmental compliance increased by more than $119 million from the previous fiscal year.

During his Senate confirmation, Defense Secretary James Mattis said in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee that “climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today. It is appropriate for the Combatant Commands to incorporate drivers of instability that impact the security environment in their areas into their planning.”

When serving as the commanding general of the 1st Marine Division during the second Iraq War, Mattis said the Department of Defense should “unleash us from the tether of fuel.”

Mattis wasn’t advocating addressing alternative fuels because of climate change, but rather because of the cost of transporting fuel, Zissimos said.

“The biggest cost for fuel is transportation, delivery, and storage,” Zissimos told The Daily Signal. “Operations are primarily overseas. A huge investment in biofuels will not reduce that cost because they will still need to be transported overseas.”

#Environmentalism

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americanlibertypac · 7 years

Text

Obama's radical Green Regime still commands the Pentagon

Photo: Pixabay (CC0)

“The Pentagon has bought into climate change because it makes it politically more acceptable,” @myronebell says.

A 2015 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental advocacy and research group, warned that 128 U.S. military bases could be submerged because of rising sea levels.

One of the nation’s leading environmental groups expressed frustration over the two House Republicans’ proposals.

Already, Obama-era mandates linger.

However, most policies are administrative, said Rachel Zissimos, a research associate for national security and defense studies at The Heritage Foundation.

In 2015, the Department of Defense issued a report on the unrest climate change could cause. In a statement about the report, the department said:

A Department of Defense comptroller general’s report in February 2016 found that the cost of environmental compliance increased by more than $119 million from the previous fiscal year.

When serving as the commanding general of the 1st Marine Division during the second Iraq War, Mattis said the Department of Defense should “unleash us from the tether of fuel.”

Mattis wasn’t advocating addressing alternative fuels because of climate change, but rather because of the cost of transporting fuel, Zissimos said.

#Environmentalism

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