Climate and Energy

Greed is usually the reason we see so many companies foul up our lands, air and water. But in Colorado, where a coal mining company is refusing to make money off the gas it is releasing, a little greed could actually help the environment.

For years, coal companies in Colorado's North Fork Valley have been spewing millions of cubic feet of methane into the atmosphere every day from their underground coal mines. They have to get rid of the methane because otherwise it's a safety hazard.

But methane pollution is a lose-lose-lose proposition. The planet loses due to the global warming impacts. That's because methane (AKA natural gas) is more than 20 times more powerful than CO2 at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

The Chukchi Sea. Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

In the Arctic waters surrounding Alaska, George W. Bush is still president, but Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has the chance to inaugurate a new regime.

Shell Oil recently got the green light from the Department of Interior to drill next summer just off the shores of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in waters that are an important migratory route for endangered bowhead whales. With numerous decisions on offshore drilling in the Arctic still pending, the looming question is, will Sec. Salazar chart his own course—using science as a guide—or will he continue to make decisions as though Bush were still in charge?

Last summer, Salazar told the magazine American Cowboy, "The science is fundamental to decisions we make. Ignoring the science will imperil important priorities to the United States and our world. Unfortunately, the last administration often ignored the science to get to what it wanted to get to. We will not do that."

On the Arctic, science has spoken, and I hope Sec. Salazar meant what he said.

"Putting lipstick on a pig" describes a PR tactic of making something bad look good. But, two Canadian companies have added a new twist to this old ploy—they've changed the name of the pig.

We're referring to the oil mining practices of EnCana Corp. and Cenovus Energy Inc. The companies employ a form of mining oil from Canadian tar sands that has a bad reputation for being highly destructive to the environment. To counter this, they are no longer using the phrases "tar sands" and "oil sands" in referring to their work. Now they describe themselves as conducting "enhanced oil projects."

Extracting oil from tar sands is one of the dirtiest, most polluting methods—and Earthjustice is challenging a pipeline that would daily bring nearly half a million barrels of oil obtained this way into the United States from Canada. No matter what you call it, there's no disguising its harmful impacts: the excessive greenhouse gas emissions, the vast amounts of water employed in mining, the multitude of toxins released into our air and water.

If you’re wondering what you should be doing on Saturday night, well, here it is: watch some television! At 8 p.m. eastern, the world television premiere of "Coal Country" will be on the Reel Impact series on Planet Green.

Now, about the film. Earthjustice is a proud sponsor of "Coal Country," and we’ve been hosting events in San Francisco, New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles and Chicago to show people this powerful film and educate them on the tragedy that is mountaintop removal mining.

There’s been a lot discussed in these pages about the destruction, pollution and impacts of mountaintop removal mining, but never before has there been such an insightful and moving depiction. "Coal Country" interviews miners, activists, politicians and coalfield residents to present the true impacts of coal in Appalachia. Phylis Geller—who wrote, produced and directed the film—and executive producer Mari-Lynn Evans weave a story that really gets at the true costs of our dependence on coal.

Take the time to watch "Coal Country" on Planet Green this Saturday night. If you don’t have Planet Green in your cable package, you can purchase a copy of the DVD here. And for those not in the eastern time zone, the film is being replayed at 11 p.m. eastern, so you can watch it during prime time.

The U.K. Department of Energy and Climate Change has announced a policy that would ban new coal-fired power plants without carbon capture and storage (CCS).

New plants would be required to capture and store CO2 equal to at least 300 megawatts of CO2 emissions from the day they go online, and would be expected to capture all their CO2 emissions by 2025. For comparison, the climate bill that passed out of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee last week requires only 60 percent capture and storage by 2025 for new plants. Government-subsidized demonstration projects in the U.K. will cost at least £10 billion ($16.76 billion).

That’s quite an investment in coal that will not be spent on renewables. The energy plan also calls for 10 additional nuclear power plants to be built largely on sites where nuclear plants already exist, a part of the proposal that was met by skepticism from green campaigners.

After weeks of speculation from Al Gore and others, we have the first indication from President Obama himself that he may go to the Copenhagen climate conference. In an interview with Reuters, Obama said he will travel to Copenhagen if he feels there is a chance of progress:

If I am confident that all of the countries involved are bargaining in good faith and we are on the brink of a meaningful agreement and my presence in Copenhagen will make a difference in tipping us over the edge then certainly that's something that I will do.

President Obama's statement of intent may signal the beginning of increased pressure on the Senate from the White House to continue pushing climate legislation forward, even as the health care debate—which has eclipsed global warming recently—rages on. Last week, the Kerry-Boxer global warming bill was passed out of the Environment and Public Works committee by a vote of 11-1. No Republican committee members were present for the vote.

Your move, Congress.
 

Bill McKibben, founder of the 350.org campaign, took to the pages of the latest Mother Jones to offer a great primer on the Copenhagen climate conference. McKibben's article is clear: the world needs to stabilize carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 350 parts-per-million—the threshold of life on planet earth as we know it, according to scientists like James Hansen.

Problem is, the current atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is 387 ppm, which means we've already exceeded that threshold by a mile.

What on earth to do? The politically impossible. A simple statement in McKibben's article leapt off the page and grabbed my attention: Getting to 350 ppm "would require focusing the entire planet for a generation on the task of transitioning off fossil fuel…It would mean aiming for a solution, not an agreement." To many, that's a painful (perhaps unrealistic) argument, but that doesn't make it any less true.

UPDATE: Democrats today (Nov. 5) ducked a Republican boycott to pass a climate change bill out of a key Senate committee. One senator described the move as a way to prove the United States is serious about fighting global warming.

President Obama hoped to have a climate change bill in hand to strengthen America's credibility in December at the world climate change conference in Copenhagen—but he may have to settle for a "show of progress" instead. A Republican boycott on the bill this week all but doomed hope of getting a bill passed before the conference.

But, is a "show" enough to convince other countries that the U.S. is no longer the rogue nation it was under Bush? We posed the question to Earthjustice legislative representative Sarah Saylor. Here's her response:

Anyone watching the process knows that our Congressional leaders are moving the legislative process forward. That bill has cleared two of five key hurdles in the legislative process by passing through committee to the House floor, and through the House floor to the Senate.

The Maldives

Last month, in an effort to draw attention to the likelihood of being submerged by global warming’s rising seas, government ministers of the Maldives—an island nation that sits mere feet above sea level—convened a meeting underwater.

Officials strapped on scuba gear and dove 15 feet to the ocean floor to sign a document that called for sharp reductions in global carbon pollution. Their action speaks to a dire future for Maldivians—who are very much on the front lines of the fight against global warming—and is an urgent call to world leaders preparing for international negotiations at Copenhagen.

Now, the Nepali cabinet is joining the Maldives in their plea for global action. Cabinet members are planning to meet at the Mt. Everest base camp later this month to draw attention to the impact of melting glaciers in the Himalayas. These glaciers fill such major rivers in Asia as the Ganges and the Yangtze, which in turn support most of the continent’s inhabitants.

At this week's U.N. climate talks in Barcelona, a big showdown is brewing between the rich countries and the Global South. The dispute boils down to whether the rich countries ("Annex 1 countries" including the USA) have made strong enough commitments heading into Copenhagen.

If the Annex 1 countries, who have profited from industrial pollution for decades, have missed their Kyoto targets, how can they now demand poor nations dramatically reduce their emissions? Here's more on that issue.

The dispute led to a brief walkout. But, African nations are now back at the table.

Meanwhile, back at home…