Well-Oiled Machine?

The June issue of Time magazine is out and in it an article featuring the petroleum bonanza in Canada's tar sands.

Time is considered to be a credible magazine and readers may deem it forward-thinking. Unfortunately the author of this article is a little too short-sighted for yours truly.

"The mega-projects across Alberta's oil sands rival some of the humankind's greatest engineering achievements, including the pyramids of Giza and the Great Wall of China," claims Time. "Canada may become the new Saudi Arabia, the last great oil kingdom, right on the U.S. border."

And as for the "chunk of boreal real estate" (did they really print that?!)? The National Resource Defense Council states the following about Canada's boreal forests -- "Like the Amazon, the boreal forest is of critical importance to all living things on earth. It is home to the one of the world's largest remaining stands of spruce, fir and tamarack. The thick layers of moss, soil and peat of the boreal are the world's largest terrestrial storehouse of organic carbon and play an enormous role in regulating the Earth's climate. Boreal wetlands filter millions of gallons of water each day that fill our northern rivers, lakes, and streams. "

A slight disconnect? ......I think so.

Carbon Emissions Increase Again....

The U.S. Energy Information Administration just released preliminary data showing that carbon dioxide emissions from energy sources in the United States grew by 1.6 percent in 2007—the single largest year-over-year increase since Bush took office. This one-year increase of 96 million metric tons is like adding 14 million cars to the road. And if we look at the increase in carbon dioxide pollution from energy sources during the entire Bush administration, that sum rises to 230 million metric tons—a nearly 10 percent increase.

The jump this year comes after a small decline last year that was driven by a mild winter and summer in 2006 that enabled Americans to use less energy for heating and cooling. With weather returning to normal last year, higher electricity use is one of the largest drivers of emissions increases in both the commercial and residential sectors.

Overall emissions from the electric power sector increased by 3 percent in 2007. Coal-fired electric plants were the number one stationary source of emissions last year, accounting for a 35.3 million metric ton carbon dioxide increase between 2006 and 2007. Some utilities have turned to natural gas to try to reduce their emissions. And the increase in natural gas emissions in 2007 slightly exceeded coal—a 35.6 million metric ton increase of carbon dioxide.
Petroleum-related carbon dioxide emissions experienced a tiny decrease in 2007, mostly due to a decrease in emissions from oil-fueled electricity. Nonetheless, petroleum still generates the most emissions of all fossil fuels, surpassing coal in 2007 by 429 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. And emissions from petroleum use have grown the most since Bush took office—4.6 percent since 2001.

Click here for the full article from the Center for American Progress.

Bottlemania - The Continued Debate Over Bottled H2O

Enough already with the constant debate about bottled water. We all know it's unnecessary and frankly buying bottled water these days is more than slightly taboo. Rightly so! Don’t get me wrong, bottled water is essential for emergency circumstances, but on a daily basis it is hardly necessary.

I recently came across and article that highlights some obvious truths….

- From a marketing perspective, you couldn't ask for a more ideal product; imagine owning a commodity that literally everybody not only wants, but actually needs, on a daily basis. You'd be sitting on a $60 billion a year industry--just like the corporations who are in the process of privatizing the world's water supply. (GULP!)

- The bottled water industry has made a fortune playing on our fears about whether the water that flows from our faucets is really safe despite the fact that tap water is held to a higher standard than bottled. With a few exceptions, the quality of our tap water's actually quite high.

I think Kerry Trueman said it best—“At a time when there's less water to go around and more people demanding it, Bottlemania makes the case that it's not in our interests to let private multinational corporations float their boats on our nation's water. That's not democracy, it's dam-ocracy, and it could damn us all if we let their unquenchable thirst for profit take precedence over our right to clean, safe, free drinking water.”

Source: The Huffington Post

Drilling for Defeat?

Nearly two decades ago, Republicans won the West by linking Democrats to environmentalists, who supposedly cared more for the spotted owl and other favored species than they did for the jobs of loggers or miners. But now, as a boom in natural-gas drilling reshapes the region, Western Democrats have found success recasting environmentalism as a defense of threatened water supplies, fishing spots and hunting grounds. As a result, the party may hold the advantage this fall in the region’s key Congressional races. The simultaneous rise of Western energy production and the Western Democrat is no coincidence.

The Rocky Mountain drilling boom has been aided by the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which was once considered a partisan political masterstroke. In providing incentives for energy development, Republicans delivered a profitable gift to an industry that directs most of its campaign contributions to G.O.P. candidates. That gift was sweetened by the Bureau of Land Management, which, under President Bush, has expanded the amount of federal land open to energy development and increased the number of drilling permits.

But the acceleration of energy exploration has split the national Republican Party from local Republicans upset by the downsides of the energy boom. “Republicans created a monster for themselves,” said Rick Ridder, a Colorado-based Democratic consultant. “They put public policy in direct conflict with their base voters.”

In Wyoming’s Upper North Platte Valley, Jeb Steward, a Republican state representative, helped lead the successful 2007 opposition to the B.L.M.’s proposed sale of 13 oil and gas parcels. “We have customs and cultures that have developed over a hundred years based on the utilization of multiple renewable resources — agriculture, tourism, wildlife, fisheries,” Steward said. “When B.L.M. proposed issuing the leases, residents were asking, ‘What does this mean to the lifestyles that we’ve all grown accustomed to?’ ”

Click here for the full NY Times article.

The Polar Bear Is Made a Protected Species

The polar bear, whose summertime Arctic hunting grounds have been greatly reduced by a warming climate, will be placed under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced on Wednesday.

The polar bear is being stressed by melting sea ice but scientists say the species would not vanish entirely for a century or more. But the long-delayed decision to list the bear as a threatened species may prove less of an impediment to oil and gas industries along the Alaskan coast than many environmentalists had hoped. Mr. Kempthorne also made it clear that it would be “wholly inappropriate” to use the listing as a tool to reduce greenhouse gases, as environmentalists had intended to do.

While giving the bear a few new protections — hunters may no longer import hides or other trophies from bears killed in Canada, for instance — the Interior Department added stipulations, seldom used under the act, that would allow oil and gas exploration and development to proceed in areas where the bears live, as long as the companies continue to comply with existing restrictions under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Click here to read the full NY Times article.

With low-carbon diets, consumers step to the plate; total energy used in food production.

Not every student in line at the University of Redlands cafeteria was ready for self-sacrifice to save the planet. "No hamburger patties?" asked an incredulous football player, repeating the words of the grill cook. He glowered at the posted sign: "Cows or cars? Worldwide, livestock emits 18% of greenhouse gases, more than the transportation sector! Today we're offering great-tasting vegetarian choices."

The portabello burger didn't beckon him. Nor the black-bean burger. "Just give me three chicken breasts, please," he said -- and with that, swaggered off to pile potato wedges onto his heaping plate. Although this perhaps wasn't the most accepting reaction, it resulted in the desired dietary shift as Bon Appetit Management Co. rolls out its new Low Carbon Diet in 400 cafes it runs at university and corporate campuses around the country. Chicken, it turns out, has a lower carbon footprint than beef.

Conscientious consumers who want to tread lightly are increasingly concerned about their own carbon footprints. They've changed lightbulbs. They covet a Prius more than a Porsche. Now their anxiety over global warming has shifted to the supermarket and dinner table. The global food and agriculture system produces about one-third of humanity's contribution to greenhouse gases. So questions about food are shifting from the familiar "Is this good for me?" or "Will it make me fat?" to "Is it good for the planet?"

But what's the right thing to do? It's not just paper versus plastic anymore. Is throwing out leftovers better than taking them home in a plastic container? Is refrigerated better than frozen? A French brie sandwich or chicken salad? Sensing this, the country's major food service companies are talking about energy efficiency, waste reduction and, now, how to reduce carbon emissions associated with the food they serve.

Changing the meaning of "carb" in "low-carb" has been kicking around for years. Those who preach eating local, such as the locavores, have hogged much of the attention with a focus on "food miles," the distance that food travels from farm to fork. Food science has begun to look beyond transportation, to the smorgasbord of contributors to carbon dioxide and other gases with even greater atmospheric warming potential, such as methane.

Researchers tally emissions related to each of hundreds of steps in the life cycle of various foods, from the energy-intensive process of manufacturing fertilizer for crops to the leftovers scraped from plates that end up rotting in a landfill, burping methane. As they perfect these life-cycle assessments, scientists are ready to answer the question raised by a cartoon-book character in a Roy Lichtenstein-inspired poster outside the university cafe: "Is my cheeseburger causing global warming?" It was a sparkling spring day at the Getty Center in the Brentwood hills. Instead of heading into the sunshine for their lunch break, museum staffers filed into a darkened auditorium to hear a lecture: "Play With Your Food."

The crowd appeared to be a thoughtful bunch, many of them foodies, and more receptive than a famished football player to weighing the environmental and social consequences of their food choices. Helene York took the stage with her PowerPoint slides, fulfilling the directive of Fedele Bauccio, Bon Appetit's blunt-talking chief executive: "Customers make choices for us. We need to educate them."

York, who directs the Low Carbon Diet initiative, explains that the diet is to slim down the company's greenhouse gas emissions by 25%, beginning by changing the 80 million meals it serves a year.

"That sounds like a lot," she said. Yet it's nothing compared with what can happen if Bon Appetit persuades its parent company, Compass Group, to follow suit, as it did with the switch to sustainably caught seafood. Compass Group is the largest food-service company in North America, with 8,000 accounts including sports arenas, hospitals and Chicago's public schools. Other food service companies, such as Sodexo (Marriott), are also considering menu changes.
To start, Bon Appetit has targeted those items with the biggest impact. That means reducing the amount of beef and cheese.

"Inherently, beef and lamb are worse than every other form of animal protein," York said. The reason? These ruminants incessantly belch methane gas. She points out that methane has 23 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. Vegetarians think they get a free ride, she said. Yet if they nibble on a grilled cheese sandwich, they buy into the same industrialized system, which is fertilizer-intensive. Overuse of fertilizer releases nitrous oxide into the atmosphere, a gas that has 296 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide.

"Does your sushi get more frequent-flier miles than you do?" another poster flashes on the screen. It draws a laugh from the audience -- until York explains that Bon Appetit is phasing out fresh seafood brought in by air freight.

About 80% of the seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported, and nearly all of it takes to the skies. That means delicate slabs of fresh halibut and salmon carry a long contrail of aircraft exhaust to the table. Bon Appetit is setting up supply lines to buy Alaskan salmon fillets and other fish frozen at sea. York said top chefs swear that diners cannot tell the difference if fish is properly prepared. Bon Appetit, which long ago joined the buy-local movement, is slowly eliminating out-of-season produce flown from Chile and other Latin American countries and cutting by half its imported tropical fruit, such as bananas, pineapples and papayas.
It has also phased out imported bottled water, she said. No more San Pellegrino. No more Perrier.

"Voss water, what's that? It's water that comes in a fancy glass bottle from Norway, of all places," York said, revealing her Brooklyn accent. "Don't we have enough water here?"
York told the group that plastic packaging, despite its bad reputation, is only a minuscule part of the carbon footprint. So if it's a question of taking leftovers home in plastic containers or leaving the food to be thrown away, she said, take it home.

"The food with the highest carbon footprint is the food we don't eat," she said, explaining that 3% of America's energy use is tied up in food trucked to the dump. Although Americans are piling more food onto their plate than ever, studies show that not all of these extra calories are expanding waistlines. As much as 25% of those leftover peas and carrots and gristle ends up buried in the landfill. Deprived of oxygen, the mash of rotting food produces methane gas. Bon Appetit has begun to reverse the trend of super-sized meals. Burgers on many college campuses, for instance, have been downsized from one-third to quarter-pounders, with prices adjusted accordingly.

York, a Harvard- and Yale-educated MBA, is part carbon cop -- "I spent a lot of time beating up our suppliers" -- and part mom, reminding customers that their mother was right: You should eat more vegetables. You shouldn't waste food. She's also a food detective. She leads the company's effort to track the origins of Bon Appetit's food purchases to assess carbon emissions.
That's not always easy. She has found confounding things, such as San Joaquin Valley-grown tomatoes that get shipped to Massachusetts and back because of the peculiarities of the nation's food distribution system.

She isn't the only one who's frustrated. The Tesco supermarket chain in England wants to affix a carbon score to each item on its shelves but has been bogged down in the complexity of the task.

The U.S. Congress in 2002 took a step toward unmasking food supply lines by passing a law requiring meat and produce to carry a label revealing the country of origin. But under pressure from food suppliers and grocery chains, legislators have repeatedly postponed the law's implementation for all but seafood.

That leaves supermarket shoppers staring at well-stocked shelves from around the globe without any sure way to tell where the food is from. Bon Appetit has brought together a group of scientists to help consumers sort through the thicket with an online carbon calculator at http://www.eatlowcarbon.org/.

Later in the week, York is off to Redlands to train the Bon Appetit managers from various university campuses about today's national rollout of Low Carbon Diet day. The University of Redlands cafe is the test case. A poster invites students: "You've changed your light bulbs, now change your lunch. Find out how food choices affect climate change."

Source: LA Times

Gas Prices Send Surge of Riders to Mass Transit

With the price of gas approaching $4 a gallon, more commuters are abandoning their cars and taking the train or bus instead.Mass transit systems around the country are seeing standing-room-only crowds on bus lines where seats were once easy to come by. Parking lots at many bus and light rail stations are suddenly overflowing, with commuters in some towns risking a ticket or tow by parking on nearby grassy areas and in vacant lots.

“In almost every transit system I talk to, we’re seeing very high rates of growth the last few months,” said William W. Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association.
“It’s very clear that a significant portion of the increase in transit use is directly caused by people who are looking for alternatives to paying $3.50 a gallon for gas.”

Some cities with long-established public transit systems, like New York and Boston, have seen increases in ridership of 5 percent or more so far this year. But the biggest surges — of 10 to 15 percent or more over last year — are occurring in many metropolitan areas in the South and West where the driving culture is strongest and bus and rail lines are more limited. In Denver, for example, ridership was up 8 percent in the first three months of the year compared with last year, despite a fare increase in January and a slowing economy, which usually means fewer commuters. Several routes on the system have reached capacity, particularly at rush hour, for the first time.

“We are at a tipping point,” said Clarence W. Marsella, chief executive of the Denver Regional Transportation District, referring to gasoline prices.

Click here for the full NY Times article.