Environmental news, policy and analysis.
Environmental groups recently filed suit in federal court alleging that the Department of the Interior was wrong to hold that the placement of polar bears on the endangered species list does not mandate the regulating of greenhouse gases. The Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the plaintiffs in the case, argue that because the polar bears are endangered due to the effects of global warming (i.e., melting Arctic sea ice), that the result of their addition to the list requires the taking of measures to decrease the causes of global warming.
Interior Department Secretary, Dirk Kempthorne, holding the same point of view as President Bush, argues that the Endangered Species Act was not intended to address global warming and that climate policy should instead be enacted through the political process. The policies surrounding the inclusion of polar bears on the protected list has already proven to be quite controversial.
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The International Monetary Fund released a study [subscription required] examining the effects of drastic greenhouse gas reductions on the global economy. The study looked forward to the year 2040 and worked from the assumption that greenhouse gas emissions would need to be cut to levels 60% of that released in 2002.
The study concluded that while the global economy, in that time period, should more than double in size, the burden of reducing greenhouse gasses through, carbon taxes or cap-and-trade systems, would cause the global economy to be only 2.6% smaller than it would otherwise. Therefore, according to the study, drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions will still permit dramatic increases in the size of the global economy.
Naturally, the study noted that all countries in the world must abide by these cuts, in order to make them effective. As we all know, if China and India grow without concern for their own emissions, any reductions made elsewhere in the world would be more than canceled out. Hopefully this study will not only help convince developing countries that it is possible to have substantial economic growth while significantly reducing emissions, but it may also convince American leaders resistant to emission curbs that this is possible.
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An op-ed at SFGate.com looked at a topic we’ve touched on a few times here—whether ethanol production is reducing or exacerbating the problem of greenhouse gas emissions. We’re interested by this topic because it deals with the potential dangers of reflexive governmental mandates. Whether ethanol is actually worse for the environment than petroleum, we’re not sure, but this opinion piece does a nice job of identifying the major criticisms of biofuels and their negative effects on the environment and society in general.
Those criticisms are as follows:
-Increased demand for corn (and other biofuel crops) causes the price of those crops, and consequently food, to increase.
-Increased crop prices make it more expensive for farmers to feed their livestock, thereby increasing the price of meat and dairy products.
-Biofuel production requires extreme amounts of water—in fact, one gallon of ethanol requires four gallons of water to produce.
-The increased demand for biofuel crops leads to deforestation and destruction of wetlands and grasslands, to make space for the planting of those crops. Both the process of clearing these lands, as well as the loss of their carbon consuming foliage, lead to increased greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.
And towards the end of the op-ed piece, the author basically throws in the kitchen sink, with the following paragraph:
Scientists predict that the Gulf of Mexico, already polluted by agricultural runoff from the United States, will only get worse as demand for ethanol, and therefore corn, increases. Meanwhile, rain forests throughout Central and South America are being razed to make way for land to grow biofuel components. Tortilla shortages in Mexico, rising flour prices in Pakistan, Indonesian and Malaysian forests being cut down and burned to make palm oil, and encroachments upon the Amazon rainforest due to Brazilian sugar cane production — all these developments indicate that biofuels are turning out to be more destructive than helpful.
While complete scientific consensus has not yet been reached on this topic, these arguments that biofuels are a bad thing for the planet sure seem compelling as more information about their consequences comes to light.
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The Natural Resources Defense Council, in analyzing federal government temperature data from the period of 2003 to 2007, recently concluded that the Western United States is heating up almost twice as quickly as the rest of the world.
According to the data, for this five year period, the American West experienced an average temperature that was 1.7 degrees F warmer than the mean for the 20th century. In comparison, the increase in average global temperature for the same period was 0.55 degrees F.
Even before the impacts of global warming, the Western Region had serious water issues, given that it is a natural desert. Add on to this fact the rapidly growing population and apparently radical effects of climate change, and the region is set up for a serious long-term problem.
For anyone interested in this issue, we would highly recommend a great book analyzing this issue by Marc Reisner, called Cadillac Desert. In this book, Reisner takes a look at the history of American water acquisition and management, in the context of the American West. He asserts that our civilization will face, in the not-too-distant future, existential issues relating to the use and management of water (or lack thereof).
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The New York Times had an interesting article by journalist and blogger Andrew Revkin about the tendency of some people to view discrete weather events as evidence of the truth behind their position on global warming. Revkin notes that this past year has been much colder than those in recent times and is being used by skeptics as evidence that global warming is not occurring.
One example he gives is the press release from the communications director for the Republican minority on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which reads: “Earth’s ‘Fever’ Breaks: Global COOLING Currently Under Way.”
Most climatologists believe that the recent cold spell is likely related to the common weather phenomenon, La Niña (a chilling in the tropical Pacific), but could also be affected by sunspot cycles or other common shifts in oceanic or atmospheric patterns. Additionally, there have been similar instances when temperatures have dropped in the short term only to return to the long term warming trend (including 1988, 1991-92 and 1998). (more…)
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