Construction of the $2 billion 120 megawatt Longleaf power plant was blocked yesterday by Fulton County Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore, overturning a ruling that would have allowed the first coal plant to be built in Georgia in 20 years.

Environmentalists cite Moore’s ruling as the first time a judge has applied the April 2007 ruling from the Supreme Court stating the greenhouse gas emissions are a pollutant and must be regulated.

I just posted more on the ruling, reactions from both the plants developers and environmentalists, as well as what this could mean for future coal-fired plants in the planning stages – for the full story go to my post at TriplePundit.com.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) today released its latest study of global renewable energy investment.  2007 was another record-setting year for investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency, according to UNEP’s “Global Trends in Sustainable Energy Investment 2008.” 

More than $148 billion was raised and invested in these sectors during 2007 – 60% more than 2006 - even as the credit crunch spread, deepened and weakened the US and other economies. 

Though the bulk of investment capital flowed into Europe and the US, respectively, the share of total investment accounted for by China, India and Brazil increased 14-times in absolute terms – from $1.8 billion to $26 billion, and from 12% in 2004 to 22% in percentage terms last year, according to the UNEP study, which was prepared by New Energy Finance. 

Facts & Figures

“Sustainable energy transaction volume” as defined by UNEP totaled $204.9 billion globally in 2007.   Some $98.2 of the total flowed into new renewable energy generation; $50.1 billion went into technology development and scaling up manufacturing.  Mergers and acquisitions accounted for $56.6 of the total. 

Wind energy led the renewable energy field, attracting more than $50.2 billion of investment capital.  Solar power was the fastest growing segment of the market, attracting approximately $28.6 billion in 2007, which translates into an average annual growth rate since 2004 of 254%.

“The clean energy industry is maturing and its backers remain bullish.  These findings should empower governments - both North and South - to reach a deep and meaningful new agreement by the crucial climate convention meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009,” Achim Steiner,  UNEP’s executive director, commented in a media release.

Renewable energy and energy efficiency investment was subdued by the end of 2007 and into Q1 2008 with banks tightening credit and restructuring in the US ethanol industry as concerns over rising food prices and supply shortages took their toll. 

Investment flows rebounded in most sectors during Q2, however, even as economic and geopolitical concerns hung overhead.  Sustainable energy venture capital and private equity in rose 34% in Q2 2008, new asset finance was up 8% and public market investment was showing a strong recovery, as exhibited by Portuguese utility EDP’s spinning off its renewable energy business,  EDP Renovaveis, in an IPO, according to the study.

“Just as thousands were drawn to California and the Klondike in the late 1800s, the green energy gold rush is attracting legions of modern day prospectors in all parts of the globe,” said Steiner, who is also a UN Under-Secretary General.

Interested in listening in on an executive summary of the report’s findings?  You can download the full report, as well as listen to a podcast of Steiner doing just that in various languages here. 

Now there’s leadership for ‘ya…

In April 2007 the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection agency has the authority and obligation to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as pollutants that contribute to climate change. The ruling also made clear that the EPA could not shrink from this responsibility unless it provides a scientific bases for doing so.

In December 2007, in apparent compliance with the Supreme Court’s ruling, the EPA emailed a draft report to the White House that, according to an EPA official, concluded that greenhouse gases endanger the public health and welfare and should be controlled. The White House refused to open the email and several EPA officials have said the Bush Administration asked for the email to be recalled. It wasn’t. And so the email sat, ignored.

The report also stated that, based on data from the Energy Department, it would be cost effective to set CAFE fuel efficiency standards to 37.7 MPG by 2018. Ten days after the email was sent and left unopened (with no further attempts from anyone to otherwise deliver the information and suggest someone in the Bush White House at least read it), the president signed into law an energy bill requiring CAFE standards at 35 MPG by 2020, less rigorous than the EPA’s ignored recommendation.

This, in conjunction with the EPA/White House fiasco over refusal to comply with numerous subpoenas related to White House influence over EPA administrator Steven Johnson’s decision to deny California’s waiver to set tailpipe emission standards, has drawn increased attention to the EPA’s failure to comply with the Supreme Court ruling.

Despite the failure of the White House to read its email, it apparently knows (of course) what the EPA concluded over six months ago. This past week the White House has successfully pressured the EPA to cut large swaths from the original report, including a finding that tough regulation of motor vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2trillion in economic benefits to the American economy.

A senior EPA official said the original EPA findings

…showed that the Clean Air Act can work for certain sectors of the economy to reduce greenhouse gases. That’s not what the administration wants to show. They want to show that the Clean Air Act can’t work.”

White House spokesman Tony Fratto refused comment on discussions between the Bush administration and the EPA – why bother? The EPA has now obviously become the tool of George Bush instead of the an agency in honest pursuit of its mandate to protect the environment.

The ongoing charade of leadership from the White House and EPA administrator Johnson has led to the resignation of Jason Burnett, the EPA associate deputy administrator who had broad authority over climate change regulations. Said Mr. Burnett of his decision to resign:

…no more constructive work could be done on the agency’s response to the Supreme Court. The next administration will have to face what this one did not.”

In fact, we all must face the consequences of what this administration has done, and not done, for and to the American people.

As David Bookbinder, chief climate counsel for the Sierra Club, says:

All this does is further underscore that the Bush administration has not done anything, will not do anything, and has stood in the way of anyone else doing anything.”

Sources and Further Reading
New York Times – Dot Earth
US Climate Change Program
Associated Press
The Telegram

For the second time in two weeks a polar bear was sighted in Iceland – and then shot dead.

Polar bear sightings are relatively rare on the island nation (at least until two weeks ago) since getting to Iceland means bears are forced to swim hundreds of miles through icy waters far from their typical Arctic habitat.

Due to harsh criticism after the first polar bear was shot two weeks ago, authorities in Iceland said they would attempt to subdue and capture the second bear after it was discovered by a young girl walking her dog.

The chief veterinarian for the Copenhagen Zoo was flown in to help wrangle the animal late last Tuesday, but it all came to naught later that night. Police and the vet tried to get close enough to the bear to shoot it with an anaesthetiser but as they approached the bear ran in a panic – apparently toward a group of reporters. Afraid of losing control of the situation and having the bear eat a journalist, police “decided to shoot it”.

Copenhagen Zoo spokesman Bengt Holst said that Icelandic authorities made the right decision.

“It was a security problem” Holst told reporters (“Indeed!” is what I can imagine reporters dumb enough to be unprotected and in range of the poor animal).

Two polar bears making the icy swim hundreds of miles to Iceland in as many weeks “lends credence” to biologist’s determination that climate change is is destroying the arctic habitat of the polar bear, forcing them to swim farther and farther afield in search of their typical diet of ringed or bearded seals.

While I think a single occurrence, even two incidents back-to-back, of a polar bear making the unusual journey to Iceland is not in and of itself  definitive proof of anything, it certainly serves as pieces to the puzzle; clues to either take seriously or dismiss without thought. My research indicates there have been some 600 recorded sightings of Polar Bears in Iceland. The last one in 1993, and before that in 1988.

Beyond the needless death of two great animals, it is also frustrating to see the deniers and skeptic “wanna-bes” coming out of the woodwork on the heels of this story (as I’ve said before, true skepticism requires a logical thought process and some notion of a well-formed argument).

Unfounded statements like “There are 3 times as many polar bears as there were 50 years ago” – Or assertions that “Polar bears are growing in numbers” or that “…the world hasn’t warmed since 1998” (these last two from Andrew Bolt who simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about and isn’t afraid to show it) are just a few examples of how denialism is sadly alive and well, and unfortunately riding in on the backs of two polar bears that came to a tragic end.

Sources and Further Reading
Science Daily
AFP
The Age
Global Warming is Real.com

About two-thirds of Iowa has been declared a disaster area as a result of this year’s flooding.  Reminiscent of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, residents along the Mississippi River are living under curfews and have to pass through check points to see their damaged homes.

Failed government policies are responsible, according to Friends of the Earth, which has launched a Web-driven public campaign to effect changes to national flood and river management policies.  

Given the increasing frequency and intensity of precipitation and flooding in the Mississippi River basin and delta, there’s an urgent need to rethink and re-orient federal government policies.  “The Army Corps of Engineers, along with the rest of the federal government, can no longer waste money and endanger people with futile attempts to overpower Mother Nature - especially as we come to expect 100-year floods every decade.  It is imperative that we stop playing the proverbial fool and start building our lives on secure ground,” FoE asserts.

Need for a Radical Change in Policy, Practice

Specifically, FoE is calling for changes in the longstanding means and methods the federal government, through the Army Corps of Engineers, uses to cope with high precipitation and flooding along the nation’s major waterways.  A shift away from large-scale structural engineering solutions and towards wetland restoration is urgently needed, changes that scientists have been advocating for decades now.

An even more radical change in property development, as well as national flood policy and measures to minimize damage, is necessary if repeats of this and previous years’ flooding are to be avoided however, according to the FoE.  Future building and rebuilding in the Midwest should be set back from waterways and other flood-prone areas, FoE advises. 

Despite spending of billions of tax dollars, federal government and US Army Corps of Engineer efforts to minimize flooding and damages along the Mississippi are failing.  What’s more, expert advice that might lead to more enlightened policy and programs is being ignored, according to the FoE. 

Don’t rebuild in high-hazard flood-prone zones like coastlines and river deltas was expert counsel in a 1966 report to Congress by the Task Force on Federal Flood Control Policy, and was reiterated in the 1973 Report of the National Water Commission, both of which found that flood damages were increasing despite enormous flood control expenditures. 

Wetlands: How to Restore What’s Been Destroyed?

Not surprisingly, ecological research has shown that nature’s has its own, effective ways of coping with high-intensity storms and floods – wetlands.  Unfortunately, private developers with support from tax dollars have wiped most of them out. 

As much as 95% of Iowa’s and Illinois’s wetlands have been destroyed, which contributes to the damages caused by floods, FoE notes.

Restoring wetlands and river ecosystems, typically a secondary consideration in reconstruction efforts to date, would provide a relatively low-cost, low environmental impact means of providing a flood and storm buffer in the Mississippi and other river basins and should move up to the front line of national flood management policy and efforts, it asserts.  

“Both panels [the researchers who carried out the 1966 and 1973 studies] recommended that more attention be paid to relocation out of flood zones and called for greater emphasis on non-engineering solutions.  There is a growing body of evidence that healthy wetlands, in-tact dune systems and other natural ecosystems reduce storm and flood damage, but far too many tax dollars have been spent to destroy these natural systems to facilitate more development,” FoE notes on its web site. 

Increased Precipitation and a Warming Climate

“No single weather event can be attributed to global warming, and it is impossible to say that the recent heavy rains in the Midwest are caused by the climate crisis, but it is clear that in the aggregate, humans’ continued pumping of massive quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is causing more extreme weather,” the FoE wrote as part of its public appeal and political action campaign.

It cites the following as evidence of link between increasing frequency and intensity of floods and precipitation in particular regions:

- A 1995 analysis from the National Climatic Data Center showed extreme weather events in the United States were already increasing in ‘statistically significant’ ways;

- In 2002, scientists called increased precipitation ‘an expected outcome of climate change’ that ‘may cause losses of U.S. corn production to double over the next 30 years’;

- In 2004, an article published in the Journal of Hydrometeorology found that, "Over the contiguous U.S. precipitation, temperature, stream flow, heavy and very heavy precipitation … have increased during the 20th century";

- Also in 2004, scientific models predicted ‘greater increases in extreme precipitation’ due to global warming.

Political change is vital and possible, FoE urges, noting that the president appoints the Army Corps of Engineers’ leaders and is charged with ensuring that they have access to the knowledge, expertise and resources required to enact more enlightened flood control and waterway management policies.

As part of its more immediate political action campaign, it has organized a Congressional petition, which can be accessed via this link.

-Andrew Burger

Smokey the Bear has been around for some time now (since 1944) , helping people remember that “only YOU can prevent forest fires”.

I remember long ago sporting my own Smokey the Bear cap – it was the early sixties and I was 5 years old.

A lot has changed since then, but Smokey is still around, and as concerned as ever about preventing needless forest fires. Research shows that many people think wildfires are started by lightening strikes. The fact is that over 88% of wildfires nationwide are started by humans, and most of those are accidental. 

From campfires left unattended, burning trash on windy days and simple carelessness, to BBQ coals and operating equipment without spark arrestors, the level of misinformation surrounding wildfires and how easily they can get started is a serious threat to the environment.

What Does Smokey Have to Do With Climate Change?

One of the expected consequences of global warming is increased drought in many areas of the world, especially in the American West and Southwest. For the most part the “expected” is already here. There is little need to look at climate models, as this drought monitor shows drought already plagues many parts of the country. With drought comes, of course, dry conditions and increased fire danger.

Smokey will tell you that fire safety is a concern under all conditions, but with increased drought, more severe heat waves, and simply more pressure on our forests from changing climate and increased use, it is more important than ever to practice common sense, basic fire safety habits, and to step in when you see someone else acting carelessly.

Getting Your Smokey On

To help get his message out, Smokey, in partnership with the USDA Forest Service and the National Association of State Foresters has launched a series of public service announcements to help people understand the dangers “playing with fire” in our nation’s forests.

There are currently (as of June 16^th) 18 “large incidents” burning across the U.S. with 1,524,318.6 acres burned (and counting).

With his new campaign to inform the public, Smokey hopes that a new generation will be made aware of the dangers of wildfires, especially in our changing climate of droughts and heat waves. And those of us that remember him from an earlier time should be reminded too – “Only you (and I) Can Prevent Forest Fires!”

Visit Smokey the Bear on his Facebook Page and get real answers to your questions about wildfires.