Modeshift

After six months of evaluation, a Massachusetts research center said yesterday that the greenhouse gas-reducing benefits of replacing coal and natural gas with wood biomass for electrical generation are lower than previously thought.

But the study by the Manomet Center for Conservation Science also found that specific wood biomass technologies, particularly state-of-the art wood biomass plants that generate combined heat and power, produce less than half of the CO2 emissions generated by a coal-fired power plant and 19 percent less than a plant fueled by natural gas.

The 180-plus page report, “Biomass Sustainability and Carbon Policy Study,” was commissioned by the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources. In its most important finding, the study’s authors concluded that the use of sustainably harvested forest biomass in conventional plants to replace coal would actually increase carbon dioxide emissions 3 percent over coal-fired power by 2050.

Lower Emissions in Combined Heat and Power Plants
But the authors also found that replacing coal-fired power with combined heat and power biomass plants would produce significant carbon emissions reductions. A conventional coal plant produces 642 pounds of carbon emissions per million BTUs of energy generated, said the Manomet study.  A combined heat and power biomass plant produces 287 pounds of CO2 per million BTUs, less even than a natural gas plant, which produces 355 pounds of CO2 per million BTUs.

“These findings have broad implications for clean energy and the environment in Massachusetts and beyond,” said Massachusetts Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Ian Bowles, in a statement. “Biomass energy can be renewable over the long term and it has benefits in independence from imported fossil fuels. But now that we know that electricity from biomass harvested from New England forests is not ‘carbon neutral’ in a timeframe that makes sense given our legal mandate to cut greenhouse gas emissions, we need to re-evaluate our incentives for biomass.”

The Manomet research could significantly influence the alternative energy policies in other timber-rich states hoping to advance wood biomass to replace coal, the dirtiest fuel of all. The study could also sway the investment decisions that utilities are making to meet the renewable energy requirements established by 35 states and whether wood biomass plants make sense for lowering carbon emissions and making the transition from fossil fuel.

That question is very much in play in my home state of Michigan. Full disclosure: Earlier this year I assisted Traverse City Light and Power develop a communications and public engagement program for its plan to develop 30 percent of its energy from local renewable resources by 2020. One facet of the utility’s plan included generating part of its power from a state-of-the art, combined heat and power, 10 mw wood gasification biomass plant.

Biomass Splits Communities
That proposal split the Traverse region’s environmental community, with a group of advocates asserting, among other things, that the carbon emissions from the new biomass plant were too high. The Manomet Center study provides the first scientifically-qualified evidence this year that carbon emissions from the proposed combined heat and power plant would be much lower than coal, and nearly 20 percent lower than a natural gas fired plant. Traverse City Light and Power continues to pursue its plan to construct a combined heat and power 10 mw wood biomass plant in or near the city of 15,000 along the northern shore of Lake Michigan.

Similar civic resistance greeted wood biomass developers in Massachusetts and 17 other states. Late last year Massachusetts declared a moratorium on new biomass projects pending the results of the Manomet Center study.

The Manomet study was praised by activists who’ve been fighting to halt biomass energy proposals in four Massachusetts cities, and criticized by biomass energy  executives, who disputed some of the assumptions behind the findings.

“They’re making a fundamental assumption that is not correct,” said Bob Cleaves, president and CEO of the Biomass Power Association, in reference to the Manomet study. “I think they missed the point that the overwhelming feedstock for biomass projects in the country is tops and limbs from the forest products industry, rice hulls, orchard prunings, all byproducts of another process.”

He added: “To issue a study like was done yesterday and baldly assert that biomass is less carbon friendly than coal is flatly misleading, irresponsible and not an accurate portrayal of our industry.”

EPA Wants to Regulate Biomass Plants
The conclusions reached by the Manomet Center about carbon emissions from biomass are consistent with findings of other research groups in recent months, and were anticipated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In May, the EPA issued a “tailoring rule” that described how it would use the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases. The agency said it would not exempt carbon emissions from biomass plants, a decision that the biomass industry is vigorously disputing.

Until very recently scientists concluded that the cycle of tree growth-harvest-combustion-and replanting would produced what they called a “zero emissions factor” for carbon dioxide because carbon released during combustion would be absorbed by growing new trees for fuel.

The Manomet researchers concluded that burning wood biomass in conventional plants would indeed produce an emissions bonus, but it would take 21 years to develop when using wood biomass to replace coal as a fuel source. That same 21 years, the Manomet researchers noted, is the time scientists say the world needs to act to significantly reduce carbon emissions to prevent the the worst effects of climate change.

As the scientific community tilts toward viewing wood biomass as a riskier clean energy alternative, it is not yet clear what the consequences will be for replacing fossil fuels to generate electricity globally. Last year, the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21) reported that 52 gigawatts of biomass power capacity existed worldwide, about evenly split between developed and developing countries. The European Union and United States accounted for 15 GW and eight GW of this capacity, respectively.

– Keith Schneider

Late last year when Senator Lisa Murkowski announced she would vigorously oppose any effort to use the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions, environmental leaders in Washington understood the significance of the Alaska Republican’s challenge. A loyal ally of fossil fuel developers, Senator Murkowski attracts more campaign financing from the oil and utility industries than all but two other Senate lawmakers, according to federal election records.

The months-long skirnishing between Senator Murkowski and environmental advocates is now in its final hours, with both sides asserting they will prevail.

At stake is a vote in the Senate scheduled for Thursday night on a “resolution of disapproval” introduced by Senator Murkowski last January and meant to disrupt the Obama administration’s pioneering work to respond to climate change by limiting emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases in the U.S.

Though the Murkowski resolution faces an arduous route through a Democratic-controlled Congress and White House, the Thursday vote will be the most important Congressional test yet this year on where the United States is going on climate action and clean energy.

The details of what’s been happening look like this: Senator Murkowski’s resolution, which has 41 co-sponsors, would overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s formal scientific finding on December 7, 2009 that carbon dioxide and five other climate-changing pollutants endanger human health and the environment.

The EPA’s “endangerment finding,” introduced at the start of the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen last year, was saluted by climate activists and government officials around the world. The finding made it legally possible to use the Clean Air Act, the nation’s primary air pollution statute, to set and enforce new manufacturing practices and emissions limits that tamed the U.S. contribution to global climate change.

Moment of Reckoning For Both Sides
The vote couldn’t come at a more opportune moment for climate advocates and the fossil fuel industry and should provide a helpful sorting out of the relative political influence of both sides.

The last six months have been a period of dismay for the American climate action community, challenged by the disappointing results in Copenhagen, and fighting back against the furious attack by pundits and lawmakers on the validity of climate science.

The last six weeks have been equally dismal for the oil industry, which has attracted new public scrutiny because of the horrendous oil spill in the Gulf, and the equally destructive environmental consequences of mining and processing oil from Alberta, Canada’s tar sands.

If the resolution passes, an event seen as unlikely by Democratic Senate staffers, it would almost certainly have the effect of putting an even deeper  trench in the already difficult path that comprehensive climate and energy legislation has in the Senate. Conversely, if the resolution fails by a wide margin, that result would likely build new legislative enthusiasm for a climate and energy bill this year.

Important players from both sides are making their cases. Americans United for Change today began three days of cable TV advertising  in Washington, D.C., that explicitly link the BP Gulf disaster to the Murkowski resolution and the assertion that at Republicans are “working to gut the bipartisan Clean Air Act and give big oil a bailout.”

Senator Murkowski issued a statement this week that accused critics of the resolution of misrepresenting her intentions. “There has been a great deal of misinformation spread about my effort by groups — almost all of which are based outside of Alaska — who want to cut the emissions blamed for climate change no matter what the cost,” Murkowski said.  Her spokesman, Robert Dillon, said the resolution is not about debating the science behind climate change. Rather, he told the Associated Press, it’s about stopping an “out of control” government agency.

Senator Murkowski’s conservative supporters contend that using the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions is a regulatory overreach by big government. “Every sector of our economy — transportation, power generation and manufacturing — would be subjected to EPA’s bureaucratic reach,” said Tom Borelli director of the Free Enterprise Project at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

Endangerment Finding Put to Use
The Obama administration, meanwhile, has moved quickly to put the endangerment finding and its Clean Air Act authority into effect. In April the administration issued trend-setting fuel mileage and emissions standards for light vehicles that the agency said would save 1.8 billion barrels of oil and 900 million tons of carbon emissions from 2012 to 2016.

Last month, President Obama ordered similar mileage and emissions reduction rules for heavy trucks. The administration has also made plain its intention to use the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions from some 7,000 industrial installations – refineries, utilities, manufacturers, and mining sites – but leave small businesses alone.

U.S. climate and clean energy organizations anticipated Senator Murkowski’s challenge and began building support in January to defeat the resolution, which they called the “Dirty Air Act.” Among the allies in the campaign were dozens of environmental organizations, labor unions, governors, President Obama, Democratic senators, and EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson.

Newspaper editorialists also weighed in, noting that the BP Gulf Spill has made it more urgent than ever to curtail the myriad hazards of America’s addiction to oil. “Murkowski plans to offer a resolution,” said the Washington Post on June 7, “making it less likely we move away from fossil fuels, making it less likely we act to prevent a foreseeable catastrophe (in this case, global warming) from occurring, blocking regulators from doing their jobs, and disrupting one of our best opportunities to prevent climate change rather than scramble to respond after its incalculable effects rip through our atmosphere.”

In an article on Monday for the Huffington Post, EPA Administrator Jackson said the Murkowski resolution “abdicates the responsibility we have to move the country forward in a way that creates jobs, increases our security by breaking our dependence on foreign oil, and protects the air and water we rely on.”

– Keith Schneider

Kirk Johnson of the New York Times this morning published a interesting piece on how solar energy development in Colorado is being impeded by local resistance to new transmission lines. The many examples of how community or landowner or other resistance to clean energy projects has been well covered here on ModeShift. The trend represents another authentic risk to the nation’s ability to make a transition to a low carbon economy. There are oil companies on one end of that conversation, and ordinary Americans on the other. Make no mistake. If the transition occurs, it will be the hardest economic change America has achieved since the Civil War.

– Keith Schneider

On June 2, a day before BP announced it had sheared through a leaking pipe at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, one of the very few steps forward in the company’s 44-day campaign to staunch the worst oil disaster in American history, President Barack Obama finally stopped serving as the cleanup chief and became the commander in chief.

During a speech at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Obama pressed the nation to join him in viewing the catastrophe as a call to arms to pass comprehensive energy and climate legislation that would begin to limit the need to drill such deep and dangerous wells.

“If we refuse to take into account the full costs of our fossil fuel addiction – if we don’t factor in the environmental costs and the national security costs and the true economic costs – we will have missed our best chance to seize a clean energy future,” the president said. “The House of Representatives has already passed a comprehensive energy and climate bill, and there is currently a plan in the Senate – a plan that was developed with ideas from Democrats and Republicans – that would achieve the same goal.

“And, Pittsburgh, I want you to know, the votes may not be there right now,” Obama added, “but I intend to find them in the coming months. I will continue to make the case for a clean energy future wherever and whenever I can. I will work with anyone to get this done – and we will get it done. The next generation will not be held hostage to energy sources from the last century. We are not going to move backwards. We are going to move forward.”

Direct, Emphatic, Needed
The president’s remarks, the most direct and emphatic links he’s yet drawn between the BP Gulf disaster and the need for comprehensive legislation, seem plainly directed at opening a new narrative for national action in the Gulf disaster.

In response to demands that Obama “do something” about the disaster, the president appears to be pivoting from treating the disaster as an exercise in environmental restoration. He is now calling for potentially momentous changes in attitudes and policy at a time of intense domestic interest about oil, the economy, and the environment.

“An America run solely on fossil fuels should not be the vision we have for our children and our grandchildren,” the president said at Carnegie Mellon. “We consume more than 20 percent of the world’s oil, but have less than 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves. So without a major change in our energy policy, our dependence on oil means that we will continue to send billions of dollars of our hard-earned wealth to other countries every month – including countries in dangerous and unstable regions. In other words, our continued dependence on fossil fuels will jeopardize our national security. It will smother our planet. And it will continue to put our economy and our environment at risk.”

Cheered By Advocates
Climate and energy advocates this week responded to Obama’s new urgency with proposals intended to move considerably farther in reducing fossil fuel consumption and climate change emissions than has been proposed in either the House bill passed almost a year ago, or the Senate bill introduced on May 12.

“The President’s speech in Pittsburgh yesterday was the lead story in today’s Washington Post,” said Dan Lashof, the director of the Natural Resource Defense Council’s Climate Center.  “And for good reason. Using the Gulf oil disaster as proof that we need to end our dependence on fossil fuels, President Obama made his strongest case yet for enacting comprehensive energy reform that includes limits on carbon pollution. And he committed to round up the votes in the Senate to ‘get this done.’”

John Podesta and Daniel Weiss of the Center For American Progress this week proposed a nine-step action agenda to change the rules of the game for oil development and use. Their proposal includes stepping up the administration’s new fuel economy regulations,  as well as electric vehicle production programs contained in last year stimulus bill to reduce oil consumption by 7 million barrels a day by 2030. That would mean cutting oil use by 37 percent from current rates of consumption. The CAP plan also calls for levying a fee on imported oil to direct new revenues to modern public transit, and to eliminate taxpayer subsidies for oil and other fossil fuel development, a goal embraced last year by leaders of the G20 group of nations.

“The horrible BP oil disaster has reminded Americans that we must reduce our oil use,” Podesta and Weiss wrote. “We share the view that this presents an unprecedented opportunity to take bold action to achieve this goal.”

More Than What’s Been Done By White House So Far
The president’s speech also attracted fresh attention to the National Oil Savings Plan proposed by Brendan Bell, who directs the climate change program for the Union of Concerned Scientists. Bell’s proposal, which was distributed in Washington on May 21, projects reducing oil consumption 7.4 million barrel per day by 2030 by enacting new law and regulations that invest in modernizing and expanding  public transit, accelerating energy efficiency programs for buildings, expanding biofuels production, and going further than the administration already has in raising fuel mileage standards for light and heavy vehicles.

Obama introduced the new direction in energy and climate strategy last week when he met with Senate Republicans and, according to a White House statement, told them “that the gulf oil disaster should heighten our sense of urgency to hasten the development of new, clean energy sources that will promote energy independence and good-paying American jobs. And he asked that they work with him on the promising proposals currently before Congress.”

The president also toured Solyndra’s solar thin-film manufacturing plant in Fremont, California and noted that even as “we are dealing with this immediate crisis, we’ve got to remember that the risks our current dependence on oil holds for our environment and our coastal communities is not the only cost involved in our dependence on these fossil fuels.  Around the world, from China to Germany, our competitors are waging a historic effort to lead in developing new energy technologies.”

More Steps
White House advisors and aides on Capitol Hill said the president’s fresh focus on policy along with oil pollution has produced new momentum for a comprehensive climate and energy bill this year. Advocates said that to really make a difference in fossil fuel consumption and emissions reductions, the bill would need to incorporate the energy-saving ideas proposed by the Center for American Progress and the Union of Concerned Scientists, and add several more including:

1.     A national renewable energy standard, similar to those established by more than 30 states, to require utilities to generate a portion their power with wind, solar, geothermal, and other cleaner alternative energy sources.

2.     A cap on carbon that produces at least 80 percent reductions in emissions by 2050. The Senate measure proposed by Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman sets a goal of reducing emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, which is generally viewed as a decent start.

3.     A provision that provides substantial funds for developing nations to reduce carbon emissions, preserve forests, and make the transition to a clean energy economy. The Kerry-Lieberman proposal on international climate finance calls for a roughly $500 million a year investment by 2019, which is seen as too little and too late.

President Obama is scheduled to return to the Gulf coast on Friday, his third visit to the disaster zone in 5 weeks.

– Keith Schneider

On Friday, May 21, President Obama gathered in the Rose Garden the chiefs of his transportation and environmental departments to take the next big step to leverage federal climate policy and clean energy investment to spur new job growth.

The president directed Transportation Secretary Ray La Hood and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson to draw up new rules that make heavy trucks much more fuel-efficient and produce less global warming gases.

“This standard will spur growth in the clean energy sector,” Obama said. “We know how important that is. We know that our dependence on foreign oil endangers our security and our economy. We know that climate change poses a threat to our way of life. We know that our economic future depends on our leadership in the industries of the future.”

Three days later, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm was in Ypsilanti, midway between Detroit and Ann Arbor, to praise executives of the Ford Motor Company. Ford is spending $10 million to retool one plant in Rawsonville to assemble battery packs for next generation clean vehicles, and $125 million more in another plant in Sterling Heights to build electric drive transaxles. The $135 million investment, made possible by $62.7 million in federal clean vehicle grants from Obama’s 2009 stimulus act, will lead to 170 new jobs, said Ford, and bring work currently occurring in Mexico and Japan back to the United States.

Not Willing To Just Cut Hair
“In a global economy we are fighting for every single job,” said Gov. Granholm.  “We are not going to turn our back on the manufacturing sector. We are not just going to be a nation that teaches each other to dance or cuts hair. We are going to rebuild this country by having a strong manufacturing sector. And it starts right here. ”

The two ceremonies, occurring 500 miles apart, are the latest public manifestations of a little recognized but exceptionally productive political partnership between the president and Michigan’s governor that is reshaping the American vehicle manufacturing sector, and starting to produce big consequences for energy use, climate action, and job production.

Since Obama has taken office, Michigan has attracted roughly $6 billion in manufacturing investment focused on building batteries for electric vehicles. Last August, after the president announced that the Energy Department was awarding $2.4 billion in grants for battery development and manufacturing, Vice President Joe Biden personally travelled to the Detroit region to confirm that more than half, $1.3 billion, would be spent in Michigan and contribute to developing 19,000 new jobs.

LG Chem, the Korean battery maker, received $151.4 million from the Department of Energy for the $303 million battery plant it is building in Holland, near the Lake Michigan shoreline. The plant will manufacture the power packs for the Chevy Volt, the plug-in hybrid that General Motors says it will introduce later this year.  The LG Chem plant opens in 2012 and is expected to employ 400 people.

Johnson Controls received a $299.2 million federal grant to make nickel-cobalt-metal battery cells and packs, as well as produce battery separators in a plant it also is building in Holland, Michigan in a joint venture with Saft, the French battery maker. The project is expected to employ 550 people by 2014.

New Plants Across Michigan
In all 17 new battery plants are either under construction or nearing groundbreaking in Michigan, according to the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, a state agency. Toda America, a Japanese manufacturer of battery components, broke ground in Battle Creek in April for a $70 million plant that will initially employ 60 people. A123 Systems, an innovator of battery technology incubated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is building two plants just outside Detroit.

It’s understandable that Granholm and auto industry executives are enthusiastic  about the state’s embrace of clean car technology. They also support, after decades of resistance, the new efficiency and emissions reduction rules. The regulatory standards have the effect of producing new markets and force vehicle manufacturers to modernize their thinking to compete. The convergence of new technology, new regulation, and big federal and state investments has produced several thousand new jobs announced to date. Each is viewed as precious in a state overwhelmed by the downsizing of the auto industry and a riptide of manufacturing job losses over the last decade.

In Washtenaw County, where Ford’s Rawsonville plant is located, 14,000 manufacturing jobs disappeared since 2001, according to county figures. The state has lost a total of 800,000 jobs since 2000, half of them in manufacturing according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Michigan has led the nation since the middle part of the last decade in the rate of joblessness, which currently measures 14 percent, but also is improving since it’s high of more than 15 percent late last year.

“These have been a really tough eight years for everybody. We’ve all gone through it,” said Granholm on Monday. Then, brightening, she added, “but today we are sending a message to the world. You can be competitive manufacturing in the US and in Michigan.”

Indeed, at times in her public appearances, Granholm appears almost giddy about the germination stages of what could be a new era of vehicle design and production in Michigan.

Big Markets For Electric Vehicles
First are the market analyses that consistently predict big domestic and global markets for clean vehicles. In 2009, Deutsche Bank estimated that global sales of electric, hybrid, and other alternative fuel and advance technology vehicles stood at 1 million and could rise to 1.3 million this year, a 30 percent increase. J.D. Power and Associates recently estimated that sales of hybrid-electric vehicles could reach about 1.3 percent of an estimated 67 million light vehicle sales worldwide this year.

DTT Global Manufacturing Industry group estimates that by 2020, electric vehicles and other “green” cars will represent up to a third of total global sales in developed markets and up to 20 percent in urban areas of emerging markets. “The drive for e-mobility is on the rise and not only affects the automotive industry, but also other related industries such as energy & resources,” Martin Hoelz, Deloitte Germany partner and Global Automotive Affinity Group Leader for DTT Global Manufacturing Industry group, said in a news release.

Ford alone plans to launch five new all-electric or hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles in the U.S. by 2012 and in Europe by 2013. One is an electric commercial van, the Transit Connect. Two others are plug-in hybid electric sedans.

The second reason for Granholm’s fervor about clean vehicles is the daring new clean energy and climate policies that the Obama administration is steadily delivering to support them. She has personally played a big role in that delivery system.

A Partnership Between Governor and President
Following her 2006 re-election on a promise to produce new jobs, the two-term Democrat seized on clean energy to leverage Michigan’s heavy manufacturing prowess. Michigan approved a renewable energy standard that required utilities to generate 10 percent of their power with clean sources by 2015. It established a 21^st century jobs fund that provided millions for job growth, a good share focused on attracting clean energy development. And it set aside $1 billion for tax incentives to lure battery makers.

In 2008, candidate Obama campaigned on a message that envisioned a transition to the low-carbon economy that would wake up American industrial innovation, generate jobs, make the nation more secure, and reduce the threat from climate change. He introduced his New Energy For America strategy in August 2008 in East Lansing, Michigan, a state that embraced the same ideas and had a governor who could deliver the votes to help send him to Washington.

Their relationship, at least in public, seems genuinely warm. Granholm is routinely on the White House list of candidates for the Supreme Court. Obama is a regular visitor to Michigan, appearing with Granholm most recently on May 1 (see pix with University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman on right) to deliver the commencement in front of 90,000 people at the University of Michigan, the largest crowd the president has addressed since the Inauguration.

The partnership, in policy terms, has been substantive in ways little noted in Washington or the nation. The Obama administration has passed legislation and administrative rules to support the development of a clean vehicle manufacturing sector that Granholm is determined to base in Michigan.

The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act contained over $3 billion for clean vehicle development including $2 billion for battery development, and $1.3 billion for electric and alternative fueled vehicles. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has sent Michigan substantial funds from a $25 billion clean vehicle manufacturing account approved late in the Bush administration. The Obama administration also has supervised the $50 billion investment that taxpayers made to keep GM and Chrysler in business, making it much easier to direct the companies to pursue new product lines since the U.S. essentially owns both.

Rules To Spur Markets, Protect The Planet, Grow Jobs
The president and his advisors, lastly, are ordering up the administrative rules to ensure that the next generation of vehicles do more with less. A year ago, Obama directed Secretary LaHood and Administrator Jackson to develop rules for improving fuel mileage and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in light cars and trucks beginning with the 2012 model year. The government issued the rules on April 1 and the EPA estimated the new standards would save 1.8 billion barrels of oil from 2012 to 2016, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 900 million metric tons.

Both are significant. The annual fuel savings, nearly 400 million barrels, represent roughly 7 percent of all the oil used in America in 2006, according to the World Bank. The emissions reductions, roughly 180 million tons annually, represent over 3 percent of all carbon emissions the U.S. produced in 2006. Last year in Copenhagen and elsewhere, the administration said it wanted to cut greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. The clean vehicle rules will help the U.S. reach that goal.

The new heavy truck rules that Obama ordered last week should also produce substantial fuel and emissions savings. Heavy trucks, according to industry analysts, consume more than two million barrels a day, or about 12 percent of current daily use in the United States, and produce a fifth of greenhouse gas emissions related to transportation.

“America has the opportunity to lead the world in the development of a new generation of clean cars and trucks through innovative technologies and manufacturing that will spur economic growth and create high-quality domestic jobs, enhance our energy security, and improve our environment,” the president said in a memorandum accompanying the May 21 Rose Garden ceremony.

He added in his public remarks: “I believe that it’s possible, in the next 20 years, for vehicles to use half the fuel and produce half the pollution that they do today. But that’s only going to happen if we are willing to do what’s necessary for the sake of our economy, our security, and our environment.”

That message has reached deep into Michigan’s reviving vehicle manufacturing sector. Lenawee Stamping, a producer of metal stamping and welded fabrications is expanding a plant in Tecumseh to accommodate more production of GM’s clean electric vehicles and produce almost 140 jobs. Magna Holdings of America, a designer and manufacturer of automotive components and systems plans to invest $49.2 million to expand its operations in four Michigan cities to produce electric car systems and 500 more jobs, according to the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.  Tenneco Automotive, which makes emission and ride control products, is spending $15.6 million in Michigan to manufacture next generation emissions systems that help manufacturers comply with the new federal rules and generate 185 new jobs.

During a conference call with reporters on Friday after the White House announcement, Gov. Granholm praised the new standards and said Michigan was starting down the low-carbon path with promising results. “We are particularly pleased that it will be one national standard and not a patchwork of state by state regulations. That sends the right market signals,” Granholm said, adding that her state is on its way to becoming the “world capital of electric vehicles.”

– Keith Schneider

President Obama on Friday directed the EPA and the Transportation Department to develop a national policy to increase fuel efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from medium and heavy-duty trucks in time for the 2014 model year. The action comes almost exactly one year (May 19, 2009) after President Obama set new fuel and emissions standards for new cars and light trucks sold in the United States beginning with the 2012 model year.

The 2009 standards require manufacturers to raise average fuel economy for cars to 39 mpg , and light trucks and SUVs to 30 mpg by 2016. The EPA estimated the new standards would save 1.8 billion barrels of oil from 2012 to 2016, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 900 million metric tons, the equivalent of closing almost 200 coal-fired power plants.

Clean Car Legacy
Combined with the investments in clean car and new battery technology that were features of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, as well as the massive federal aid to prevent General Motors and Chrysler from going out of business, it is clear one of the significant climate action legacies of the Obama presidency is pushing vehicle manufacturers to produce more fuel-efficient and much cleaner products.

The White House announcement on fuel efficiency was dropped into an energy and climate news cycle that five months past the Copenhagen climate summit is suddenly spinning with significantly greater urgency.

The Gulf spill, growing larger by the day, is daily evidence of the lengths the nation was ready to take to satisfy its addiction to oil, and the massive economic and environmental damage deep sea drilling can cause.

Pragmatism and Principle
The American Power Act, introduced last week, includes troubling provisions designed to secure more offshore oil. But it also proposes to cap carbon emissions and provide for significant investments in clean energy, clean cars, transit and other energy conserving job-producing practices.

And the National Academy of Sciences published three studies this week that together again confirm that mankind is responsible for the warming earth and conditions are getting more dire.

All of this, and especially the American Power Act, has generated a moment-of-truth within the environmental community that is framed by the contest between pragmatism and principle. The new bill, if it passes, would be the second in as many years to focus substantial federal investment on emissions-reducing, job-producing, clean energy investments. Last year’s Recovery and Reinvestment Act included over $100 billion to jumpstart the transition to a low-carbon economy. The new climate and energy bill, along with proposing to reduce emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by the end of the decade, also includes strong federal support for energy-conserving, and alternative clean energy practices and equipment.

President Obama, recognizing the deep division, fear, and skepticism that dominate this era, is nevertheless steadily making progress in responding to climate change. One other step he needs to take is to support the climate and energy bill. But in the tilt between pragmatism and principle it is not clear where American environmentalism will land.

– Keith Schneider

As the expanse of the Gulf slick widened this week and climate advocates reckoned with an American public focused on more urgent risks closer to their front doors, 15 big activist organizations and a coalition of 200 grassroots advocacy groups from across the country, many of them green, lashed the American Power Act.

Greenpeace last Thursday called the measure “more of a ‘dirty energy bailout’ bill than anything else.” In a statement issued a day earlier, the 200 small groups said the Power Act would spur coal, oil, and nuclear development,  “would be ineffective at addressing the climate crisis,” and vowed to kill the bill if the conventional energy provisions were not dropped.

That’s no surprise. The American Power Act calls for federal investments and regulatory changes designed to secure domestic supplies of conventional fossil fuel and nuclear energy sources. Oil, coal, and nuclear power represent the foundation of a profligate way of life that has put the domestic economy and environment in peril. Over the last four decades green groups built an important and effective civic movement to deal with the consequences of dirty energy.

The American Power Act, though, also contains provisions for substantive federal investments in clean energy, transit, Smart Growth, efficiency, and energy-conserving practices. And it calls for capping carbon emissions, trading carbon allowances to generate substantial new revenue, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent of their 2005 levels by 2050. Because of these provisions some of the most prominent environmental organizations support the American Power Act as a strong step in the right direction, although with reservations about the conventional energy provisions.

Green v. Green
Green versus green is nothing new in the history of American environmentalism. The competition between pragmatism and principle is an insistent undercurrent that has surfaced periodically, for example in the rivalry between the big organizations with Washington offices, and the small organizations working in the field.

The differences expressed about the American Power Act, though, may reveal a new and very troublesome dimension to the green vs. green meme. The disagreement over national climate and energy policy underscores a growing trend, little noted in the environmental movement or the media, that involves fierce grassroots campaigns in more than 30 states to defeat big clean energy projects.

The grassroots opposition to clean energy development, most visibly displayed in the nine-year battle to permit the offshore Cape Wind project in Massachusetts, is having the effect of hindering clean energy development, and by extension, climate action.

It also appears to be opening a schism in American environmentalism that could threaten the movement’s credibility. Simply put, at a time of real crisis for the economy and the environment, what kind of leadership can be expected from American environmentalists? Can American environmentalism be a major force for good if it lets ideological principle trump pragmatism?

I Was There
Full disclosure: Last year at this time I was writing about the energy rebellion sweeping the nation as citizens and small organizations worked to close coal-fired power plants, shut down mountaintop removal coal mining, protest rate hikes in utility commission hearings, and take other actions to block expansion of the use of fossil fuels. The momentum leading to the Copenhagen climate summit included significant activism at the grassroots to block conventional polluting energy sources and spur clean energy development and jobs.

Late last year, though, a small utility near where I live in northern Michigan asked me for help, under a consulting contract, to design a communications and public engagement process for their proposal to acquire 30 percent of the utility’s energy from local renewable resources. One facet of the proposal included a plan to build a 10 mw, right-sized, state of the art, clean burning, combined heat and power, wood gasification biomass plant to replace coal-fired power.

The response from some prominent community environmentalists to that idea was intense and surprising. The win for green activists, of course, was to kill the plant, which meant under the circumstances of the utility’s power supply needs continuing to generate energy from coal.

Investigation Reveals Big Trend
I spent several weeks investigating whether the push back was an anomaly or emblematic of something more significant. I found considerable evidence that the opposition to the biomass plant in northern Michigan was part of a national trend at the grassroots to oppose big clean energy projects in dozens of states.

• The resistance at the grassroots to wood biomass is occurring in Michigan and six other states.
• Grassroots resistance to geothermal energy is occurring in California and Hawaii.
• Grassroots opposition to new transmission lines is occurring in seven states.
• California is a hotbed of opposition to solar thermal projects.
• Opposition to wind projects is occurring in 13 states.

Clean energy developers, of course, haven’t stopped proposing new projects. They are just much more aware of the civic storm such plans are capable of stirring up. Google just invested in a big wind farm in North Dakota. Scandia Wind is proposing a big offshore wind farm in Lake Michigan that has generated considerable support and opposition. Battery manufacturers are settling around Detroit, anticipating breakthroughs in development and sales of the next generation of clean vehicles. Still, the distaste for the scale and number of clean energy projects needed to supplant fossil fuels is unnerving citizens, and they are expressing their concerns in town hall meetings, active opposition campaigns, and in the media.

Last week Linda Cree, an activist in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, expressed these concerns about proposals to build industrial-scale wind farms in a forested region that is steadily losing industry and residents: “What is happening with wind power is that its potential to be an earth-gentle, inexpensive, decentralized source of energy is being co-opted by large energy firms,” she wrote on Enviromich, a statewide environmental e-mail thread. “Going with their program means mega-wind-farms and massive transmission lines – - and the ecological damage and visual blight that accompanies such large scale industrial development.  It means allowing these huge energy corporations access to great swaths of land for their lucrative projects, and encouraging Americans to feel entitled to ever greater amounts of energy.”

“Environmental Rapists?”
Added Amy Cree Dunn of Michigan’s Wild U.P., “Will the environmentalists of today become the environmental rapists of tomorrow?  I certainly hope not.  Industrial colonization is industrial colonization whether it be coal-fired power plants or a mega-windfarm off the wild shores of Lake Superior – with, of course, the accompanying web of high-voltage powerlines criss-crossing the rural-wild landscape and polluting the areas with herbicides and, that nasty phenomenon, stray voltage. ”

In response to such sentiments Barbara Hill, director of Clean Power Now, a Massachusetts non-profit environmental organization that advocated for development of the big Cape Wind offshore development, said in an interview that grassroots opposition to the tools that will help reduce use of fossil fuels and solve climate change will force the environmental community to reexamine its principles and priorities. “We have to ask what we want to accomplish as environmentalists,” Hill said. “Do we not attend change here? Do we just hold holy the things we consider sacred and the hell with development?”

Scale Up
In a new article about the opposition trend in Outside Magazine, Randy Udall, an energy analyst in Colorado and a member of the greenest political family in America, said “renewable-energy developers are running headlong into half a century of very successful environmentalist opposition to large energy projects. He also told the magazine, “The notion that if we just cover rooftops, we can leave the deserts alone, that we don’t need new wind farms, and don’t need to build new transmission lines—that doesn’t pass the mathematical sniff test.What I say to these people is: Buy a calculator. Run the numbers. We’re going to have to scale up renewable energy in a way we can hardly imagine.

The American Power Act, as introduced, is the second major bill to recognize that point since President Obama took office. The first was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, enacted in February 2009, which invests over $100 billion in clean energy production and practices and is one of the big financial drivers behind the new projects facing grassroots opposition. The new climate and energy bill has billions more for clean energy investment, plus cap and dividend provisions to reduce carbon emissions.

Frankly, the American Power Act provisions to produce more conventional fuel sources make sense, too, even if they curl an environmentalists’ hair. They are meant to buy time until the clean energy economy takes hold, and stave off the continued demise or even the collapse of the quality of life most Americans understand is at grave risk.

By allying themselves with that reality, disturbing as it is, environmentalists nevertheless have a shot with the American Power Act to take meaningful steps to begin curbing the consequences of climate change. Is American environmentalism mature and prudent enough to recognize that opportunity? Let’s hope so.

– Keith Schneider

Over 70 years ago, in the General Motors-sponsored Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, an estimated 10 percent of all Americans were transported across a landscape of innovation, creativity, and optimism that became the economic and cultural foundation of the great American century. The Futurama exhibit was a huge diorama of a highway-heavy, congestion-free, car-dependent, time-efficient, leafy green urban and suburban all American pattern of civilization that no one had ever seen before.

What astute observers recognized — among them Lewis Mumford and Walter Lippman — was that GM’s new American geography needed enormous public investments in the roads, sewers, education, research, planning, and industrial infrastructure to make it reality. The vision, though, of an airy, prosperous, shining, and mobile American way of life was powerful and eminently achievable. Over the next two decades voters elected to Congress and the White House lawmakers of both parties who cooperated in steadily enacting big and expensive bills — the GI bill to educate veterans, the 1956 Highway Act to start the Interstate System, water and sewer spending bills, research grants for engineering, just to name a few — to change the way America looked and functioned.

American Power Act Tactics
Last week, Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut introduced The American Power Act, a big and expensive spending bill that is in every way a response to that incredibly accurate 70-year-old GM vision. Its central goal is to preserve American choice and mobility — the two central features of our way of life — in the face of an oncoming train wreck of accumulating economic and environmental consequences.

Kerry and Lieberman propose to execute this impossible task by laying out two paths for legislative action that need to be achieved simultaneously. The first is to generate more supplies of conventional energy sources — oil, coal, and nuclear — in order to stave off the slow demise or even the collapse of America’s convenient, have it your way, drive through economy.

The proposal provides incentives to coastal states to pursue more offshore oil and gas development, while also giving neighboring states the power to block development within 75 miles of their shoreline. It includes $2 billion-a-year in research grants to coal-burning utilities to test carbon capture and sequestration. It proposes to invest tens of billions in loan guarantees and other support to encourage the construction of 12 new nuclear plants.

The second tactical step in the legislation is to push America as insistently as politically practical toward more energy-efficient transportation, and home-grown, renewable, and much cleaner sources of energy. The idea is to spur innovation, new patterns of compact development, and new industrialization that also generates much less carbon pollution.

Kerry and Lieberman proposed spending $70 billion over 10 years on transit, clean vehicles, energy efficiency and other Smart Growth innovations. They lay out a plan for farmers to gain income by siting renewable projects on their land and to grow biofuels. There is money for solar and wind development. And the bill contains provisions to reduce carbon emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and over 80 percent by 2050.

Carbon Pricing and Pragmatism
The bill envisions putting a price on carbon, and providing for trading carbon allowances that applies to large polluters and could generate billions of dollars annually, a portion of which would be rebated to citizens.

As a study in pragmatism, the American Power Act does pretty well. The legislation addresses most of what’s possible and practical in the place where energy, economy, the environment, and politics now meet. It’s as big and bold as it dares in an era when the boom-boom-boom of dire risks to our way of life — climate change, declining competitiveness, rising energy costs — is greeted in political circles with the squeak of small ideas and the clanging of ideological idiocy and anger from every side.

In almost every instance, environmental organizations and business groups commended Kerry and Lieberman for such a solid first draft. And in almost every instance — the exception was the Smart Growth community’s enthusiasm for the $7 billion-a-year investment in transit, clean car, and other transportation and efficiency measures — groups said the intricacies of the bill needed serious reworking.

Environmental groups are not thrilled with the oil, coal, and nuclear provisions. They aren’t thrilled with a section that would withdraw some authority of the EPA to regulate carbon emissions from certain sources. And climate groups are concerned that the bill’s proposal to start in 2019 to dedicate some of the revenue from carbon allowance trading to helping developing nations make the transition to a low-carbon economy is too little and too late.

Many business executives, meanwhile, are nervous about the carbon emissions limits. Democratic lawmakers from the Midwest want more investment in clean tech manufacturing. And the bill’s former sponsor, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham who dropped out following an ideological fit, said the proposal would not survive the — so far — uniform Republican opposition.

Transition and Trouble
America, of course, has not always had such trouble responding to change and transition. The America that resulted from executing the Futurama vision was industrious, optimistic, and capable of reacting to favorable market trends. The suburbs and highways, cul-de-sacs and three-car garages, homes with more bathrooms than TVs were made possible by cheap energy (most of which we generated ourselves), cheap land, core competitiveness in major industries, reasoned population increases, growing personal income, wealthy governments, and a willingness of taxpayers to invest in the nation’s future.

We’re not dealing well with the new market trends of the 21st century. Energy prices are steadily rising. Land is expensive. Whole industries have moved beyond our borders. The U.S. is the third fastest growing industrialized nation in the world. Incomes are declining. Governments operate with enormous deficits. Taxpayers are unwilling to invest in a collaborative future.

The result is a nation that is uncharacteristically hesitant and operating in fear. And while ideologues on all sides shout past each other, and make holding office at any level a thankless and grueling experience, the real danger in our governing circles is the entrenchment of the politics of stasis. Doing nothing. Holding the line. Not deciding. Not acting.

The American Power Act contains a suite of reasoned ideas that make sense. Hopefully it not only survives the blizzard of amendments but is strengthened. The sole provision that could be considered a breakthrough, and needs to survive intact, is the bid to put a price on carbon and then to generate revenue by trading allowances. By itself that provision sets the basic foundation to reduce emissions, spur clean energy investment, and prove to the world that the United States is serious about being a leader in the global work to solve climate change. Taking into account the political and economic context, the bill’s passage would be a step, arguably a big step, for America’s future.

– Keith Schneider

In a long-awaited proposal designed to secure existing domestic energy sources and develop new ones that begin to reverse the damaging effects of global climate change, New England Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman today introduced comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation.

The co-authors of the bill, one a Democrat from Massachusetts and the other an Independent from Connecticut, insisted that its vision is to change the direction of some of the nation’s toughest systemic problems — economic competitiveness, energy security, job loss, and environmental safety. Indeed, the 900-plus page bill’s expanse, encompassing development of the full menu of conventional and alternative energy sources, as well as international finance to help developing nations respond to climate change was widely commended by environmental and business organizations.

Support and Specific Concerns
But in nearly every statement issued today, by organizations as diverse as Oxfam America, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the League of Conservation Voters, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, executives expressed concern about specific provisions and vowed to work with Senators of both parties to fix them. Environmental organizations principally focused their critiques on provisions to expand offshore drilling, provide federal incentives to build new nuclear power plants, and support the coal and utility industries with grants to prove technology to capture and store carbon.

Environmental organizations also said they would work to improve or change provisions that would limit the reach of the Clean Air Act to reduce carbon emissions in new coal-fired utilities, and eliminate the ability of states to establish carbon-emission reduction programs. Oxfam said it was concerned that the international finance provisions of the proposal would not become effective until 2019, and did not include nearly enough federal investment to meet the commitment the Obama Administration made in Copenhagen in December to help establish a $100 billion-a-year global climate action fund to assist developing nations.

“If the proposal introduced today by Senators Kerry and Lieberman stays true to its goals,” said Michael Brune, the Sierra Club’s executive director, “it can serve as a foundation on which we can build an America free from oil dependence, with millions of new clean energy manufacturing, construction and service jobs here at home, less wasted energy, and less of the carbon pollution that is threatening our economy, our health and our climate. But this proposal will only serve as a solid foundation if the Senate both improves and completes it.”

According to Senator Kerry, who blogged about the bill’s contents on Grist and Huffington Post today, The American Power Act proposes to put a price on carbon emissions from roughly 7,500 power plants and other industrial facilities. The bill proposes to establish a market to trade emissions allowances in order to reduce carbon emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2050.

Returns to Citizens
Moreover, a provision that borrows from a separate climate and energy measure proposed by Senators Maria Cantell and Susan Collins, provides proceeds of the sale of allowances as rebates to citizens. “None of it stays with or grows government,” said Kerry. “Those rebates rise over time until it all goes straight back to Americans.”

The American Power Act also takes into account the environmental and political consequences of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The bill’s co-authors inserted a new provision that gives states the authority to veto drilling less than 75 miles off their border, although it also gives states that decide to drill access to a percentage of the lucrative federal royalties generated by oil and gas production. The proposal introduces new regulatory safeguards that require oil developers to much more thoroughly assess the risks and consequences of drilling offshore, and to more accurately predict the potential of a spill.

A third provision that environmental organizations considered crucial is the bill’s influence on the Clean Air Act, which the Obama administration is applying for the first time since its passage in 1970 to limit carbon emissions. Unfortunately, the legislation limits the Environmental Protection Agencies’s ability to clean up new coal plants. Maintaining the ability to use the Clean Air Act to reduce global warming pollution is critical, especially if the federal program is found to be ineffective in future years. The bill does call on the EPA to continue setting tough emissions standards to reduce global warming pollution from cars and trucks and continues EPA’s ability to set some performance standards for old power plants to make sure they operate more cleanly.

Other provisions of the American Power Act, designed to both gain political allies in the Senate and encourage development of alternative sources of energy and fossil fuels, include:

• Providing incentives for farmers to base wind and other clean energy projects on their land.
• $2 billion in annual investment in carbon capture technology for coal-fired utilities.
• $7 billion in annual investment for public transit, clean car technology, and clean energy research.
• Federal incentives, including loan guarantees, to encourage the construction of 12 new nuclear power plants

White House and Graham Respond
The White House issued this statement today from President Obama: “The challenges we face — underscored by the immense tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico — are reason to redouble our efforts to reform our nation’s energy policies. For too long, Washington has kicked this challenge to the next generation. This time, the status quo is no longer acceptable to Americans. Now is the time for America to take control of our energy future and jumpstart American innovation in clean energy technology that will allow us to create jobs, compete, and win in the global economy.”

The introduction of the American Power Act, initially scheduled for April 26, was delayed until today due to the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham’s decision to withdraw as a member of the three-member Senate team that wrote the bill. Over the last two weeks, as Senators Kerry and Lieberman amended provisions, Senator Graham has consistently expressed his view that the proposal could not pass without his help.

Today Graham issued a statement that described his support for a comprehensive energy bill, but also warned that its Senate approval would be a struggle: “I want America to lead the world in the coming energy revolution, not follow. I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to improve upon these concepts and find a pathway forward on energy independence, job creation, and a cleaner environment,” but ” the problems created by the historic oil spill in the Gulf, along with the uncertainty of immigration politics, have made it extremely difficult for transformational legislation in the area of energy and climate to garner bipartisan support at this time.”

Visit USCAN’s American Power Act page for more information and the climate community’s reactions. USCAN is following the developments and will be updating this article and posting others in the days ahead.

– Keith Schneider

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Laureate economist,  Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for The New York Times, and friend of most things green wrote a piece over the weekend that should give environmentalists heartache. In a column about the big Gulf oil spill, Krugman described how the environmental movement has been steadily losing political momentum because it’s been so successful in scrubbing the skies and clearing the waters of the visible hazards of pollution. He also lays the blame for the movement’s diminishing influence on the persistent attacks of the right who constructed “a narrative in which advocates of strong environmental protection were either extremists — “eco-Nazis,” according to Rush Limbaugh — or effete liberal snobs trying to impose their aesthetic preferences on ordinary Americans.”

Krugman then adds this: “I’m sorry to say that the long effort to block construction of a wind farm off Cape Cod — which may finally be over thanks to the Obama administration — played right into that caricature.” Ouch!

For any reasoned environmental advocate, myself included, that is a warning sign of the damage to the movement’s credibility that is gradually unfolding as a result of the schism between national environmental leaders — strong advocates for clean energy investment and projects — and grassroots environmental organizations working so hard in more than 30 states to halt the projects in their communities.

The juxtaposition of an expanding environmental disaster in the Gulf — an event that unites all of environmentalism — with the grassroots push back on the available alternatives to fossil fuel has proven irresistible to some writers and prompted pleas of sanity from clean energy advocates and prominent environmentalists.

In a letter to the editor last week responding to a town councilor’s criticism regarding Cape Wind’s decision to purchase turbines from the German manufacturer Siemens, Barbara Hill, the executive director of Clean Power Now made this statement.

“Back in 2003, GE had a 3.6-megawatt turbine it was ready to begin manufacturing in the U.S.; but the resistance in Massachusetts from the well-funded and politically connected opposition at that time, including the late Sen. Kennedy, Gov. Romney and the Barnstable Town Council, led it to move to a place that was wind friendly: China. The only offshore wind turbine manufacturers are overseas, because that is where the market is — as well as the national policies and subsidies to advance the industry and the associated jobs. And it doesn’t take nine years to get an offshore wind project fully permitted. Had opponents focused on a larger vision instead of their myopic view we would be the benefactors of all those jobs and economic opportunities.”

Bill McKibben, the author and environmentalist, also pleaded last year with local green organizers to consider the outcomes of their protest, which is to raise concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere steadily beyond the safe threshold of 350 ppm. “We are already well beyond 350 and accelerating rapidly in the wrong direction,” he wrote. “So when local efforts to delay or stop low-carbon energy projects come into conflict with the imperative to act urgently on global warming, they have to take second place. Because even if we win every other battle, if we lose 350, it won’t make any difference at all. You can “keep” every river and bay and lake and mountain and wilderness, but if the temperature goes up 3 degrees globally, it won’t matter. The fish that live there won’t be able to survive, the trees that anchor the landscape will die, the coral reefs will bleach and crumble. Whatever the particular part of the world that we’re each working on, it’s still a part of the world. Global warming is the whole thing.”

And Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki echoed that concern in an article last year. “I’m worried about the escalation of rhetoric on both sides,” said Suzuki. “Yes, it is urgent that we find ways to tackle the problems caused by fossil-fuel use and excessive energy consumption. And it is true that some opponents of technologies such as wind power are motivated more by NIMBY self-interest than science or true environmental concerns.”

– Keith Schneider