By Sasha Lyutse
Yesterday afternoon, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its evaluation of the costs and benefits of federal biofuels tax credits, including the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC), the largest U.S. subsidy for renewable energy that goes almost entirely to corn ethanol. The release comes against the backdrop of a full court press by corn ethanol industry lobbyists to push Congress to extend the VEETC and a disappointing attempt by Senator Amy Klobuchar to attach a 5-year extension of the corn ethanol tax credit to a Senate energy bill ostensibly supporting renewable energy, which we discussed here and the NRDC Action Fund discussed here.
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CBO finds corn ethanol costs taxpayers nearly $2 a gallon in subsidies (on top of the price at the pump)
Monday, July 19th, 2010Solving the climate crisis at the end of your fork
Thursday, July 8th, 2010‘Tis the season of farmers’ markets. Last week I moseyed on down to the Southampton (NY) farmers market and picked up some tasty, locally produced cheese that melted in my mouth with a delicious tang. But that local dairy farmer and others like him could become an endangered species if we continue on our current carbon-spewing energy path. Cows don’t produce much in very hot weather and scientists say that “heat stress and other factors could cause a decline in milk production of up to 20 percent or higher” in the Northeast under a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario. That’s a big deal: dairy is the largest agricultural sector in the region, producing some $3.6 billion dollars annually.
Oil spills, and the economics and environmental impact of resource depletion
Thursday, June 24th, 2010Following the failure of the latest efforts to plug the gushing leak from BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, and amid warnings that oil could continue to flow for another two months or more, perhaps it’s a good time to step back a moment mentally and look at the bigger picture—the context of our human history of resource extraction—to see how current events reveal deeper trends that will have even greater and longer-lasting significance.
Much of what follows may seem obvious to some readers, pedantic to others. But very few people seem to have much of a grasp of the basic technological, economic, and environmental issues that arise as resource extraction proceeds, and as a society adapts to depletion of its resource base. So, at the risk of boring the daylights out of those already familiar with the history of extractive industries, here follows a spotlighting of relevant issues, with the events in the Gulf of Mexico ever-present in the wings and poised to take center stage as the subject of some later comments.
Poll shows the public believes global warming IS happening
Thursday, June 17th, 2010By Ruy Teixeira
Conservatives have done their best to promote the idea that global warming is not happening. And recently they have been pointing to some polls that purport to show increasing public skepticism about global warming. But new Roper data released by Stanford University show that the public, when asked a straightforward question about whether global warming “has probably been happening,” endorses the idea that global warming is real by an overwhelming 74-24 margin.
Lester Brown: Reclaiming the streets
Friday, May 21st, 2010By Lester R. Brown
Lester Brown founded the Earth Policy Institute and Worldwatch Institute
Cars promise mobility, and in a largely rural setting they provide it. But in an urbanizing world, where more than half of us live in cities, there is an inherent conflict between the automobile and the city. After a point, as their numbers multiply, automobiles provide not mobility but immobility, as well as increased air pollution and the health problems that come with it. Urban transport systems based on a combination of rail lines, bus lines, bicycle pathways, and pedestrian walkways offer the best of all possible worlds in providing mobility, low-cost transportation, and a healthy urban environment.
Chemical dispersants used in oil spill have harmful and unknown effects
Wednesday, May 5th, 2010(The following blog by Natural Resources Defense Council oceans expert Regan Nelson was first posted on the NRDC site under the headline Chemical Dispersants: The Lesser of Two Evils?)
Nelson is a senior oceans advocate with the NRDC
By Regan Nelson , Senior Oceans Advocate, NRDC, Washington, DC:
I landed in New Orleans at noon yesterday, and by 2 p.m. was on my way to Venice, Louisiana, nicknamed “the end of the world” for being the last community accessible by automobile down the Mississippi River. Venice is now famous for another reason, of course. This tiny community, which has only recently rebuilt from Hurricane Katrina, has become one of the staging areas for the cleanup effort in the Gulf. Usually a quiet industrial town, Venice is teeming with people, cameras, National Guard trucks, official vehicles, and, yesterday, for a brief moment, President Obama.
Lester R. Brown: Lowering income taxes while raising pollution taxes reaps great returns
Friday, April 9th, 2010
Lester R. Brown
Steven Chu: Making buildings energy efficient ‘is truly low hanging fruit’
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010(In this piece, reprinted from a collection of essays assembled by the World Economic Forum, a Switzerland-based non-profit commited to improving the state of the world, U.S. Secretary of Energy argues that making buildings energy efficient can rack up substantial energy savings. Chu also discusses why businesses and individuals have previously failed to pick up on this opportunity.)
By Steven Chu
Steven Chu, U.S. Secretary of Energy
For the next few decades, energy efficiency is one of the lowest cost options for reducing US carbon emissions. Many studies have concluded that energy efficiency can save both energy and money. For example, a recent McKinsey report calculated the potential savings assuming a 7% discount rate, no price on carbon and using only “net present value positive” investments. It found the potential to reduce consumer demand by about 23% by 2020 and reduce GHG emissions by 1.1 gigatons each year — at a net savings of US$ 680 billion.
U.S. car fever waning after a century of growth
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
In 2009, the number of cars scrapped exceeded the number of new cars sold.
(This article, originally entitled U.S. Car Fleet Shrank by Four Million in 2009 – After a Century of Growth, U.S. Fleet Entering Era of Decline, previously ran on the Earth Policy Institute website. Lester R. Brown is president of the EPI and author of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.)
By Lester R. Brown
America’s century-old love affair with the automobile may be coming to an end. The U.S. fleet has apparently peaked and started to decline. In 2009, the 14 million cars scrapped exceeded the 10 million new cars sold, shrinking the U.S. fleet by 4 million, or nearly 2 percent in one year. While this is widely associated with the recession, it is in fact caused by several converging forces.
Future U.S. fleet size will be determined by the relationship between two trends: new car sales and cars scrapped. Cars scrapped exceeded new car sales in 2009 for the first time since World War II, shrinking the U.S. vehicle fleet from the all-time high of 250 million to 246 million. It now appears that this new trend of scrappage exceeding sales could continue through at least 2020. (See data.)
Educating and empowering the next generation of green citizens
Monday, February 15th, 2010By Jean M. Wallace, MAEd
CEO, Green Woods Charter School, Philadelphia
As a young girl, I spent every summer at the Jersey shore. I loved the beach! I’d stand by the water’s edge and simply marvel at the vastness of the ocean. With my red plastic bucket in hand, I would spend countless hours exploring the small tide pools and discovering the diversity of life that lived within the ocean current. It was fascinating to me and, looking out over the horizon I always imagined to myself, “What is out there?”
When I went to high school, I had to meet with my high school counselor to help chart my course through high school and beyond. The defining moment for me was when my counselor asked me, “What do you want to do in life?” My response was clear and direct, “I want to be a marine biologist!” I said. The counselor then asked, “Can your parents afford to send you to college?” “No” I replied. “Then I will put you in the Commercial Course track so that you can learn something productive and get a job.”
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