Climate Policy

[Bruce551]

A climate policy for people and the environment 3

multiple authors

by Elizabeth A. Stanton, Frank Ackerman

16 Aug 2010 1:52 PM

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-08-16-a-climate-policy-for-people-and-the-environment/

With a good climate policy, we could save money and our environment.

Congress is off for its summer vacation, and once again, they left the Capitol without adopting a climate policy. Is it impossible to pass a bill that's good for both the earth's climate and the American taxpayer? Or did Congress just drop the ball again?

The good news: A well-designed climate policy could slash greenhouse-gas emissions while putting money in the pockets of most Americans. The bad news: That's not the policy Congress has been debating.

What would it look like to do climate policy the right way? In a recent study released by Economists for Equity and Environment (E3 Network), we explored the impacts on emissions, and the costs to households throughout the country, under a wide range of scenarios. We found two basic principles for designing a fair, effective climate policy: We need to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions, and we need to use the resulting revenues wisely.

Start with the price: To reach the widely discussed goal of a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020, the price of emitting a ton of carbon dioxide in that year should be $75. That's definitely higher than Congress has been contemplating.

How could anyone afford that? It's simple. If most of the carbon revenues are refunded to households on an equal per capita basis, then a large majority of Americans will come out ahead. That is, your refund will be larger than the amount you pay for carbon emissions. If 85 percent of carbon revenues are refunded to households, then four-fifths of the country, including a majority in every state, will be better off. That's a bigger refund than Congress has yet considered.

Under such a policy, you'd pay a lot for carbon emissions, at the gas pump and on your electric bill ­-- but you'd get it all back, and more, in your refund check. You would come out even farther ahead if you save energy, whether by turning off unneeded lights or by buying a more fuel-efficient car. Then you'd pay less but still get the same refund. That's the point of the plan: the market incentive to reduce emissions.

Now for the not-so-good news: How does this differ from the ever-changing proposals emerging from Washington? Let's look at three basic questions.

First, is the price on carbon emissions high enough to really reduce emissions? The risks of climate change are real; the laws of physics don't need 60 votes in the U.S. Senate to make the world grow dangerously warmer.

Reducing emissions is an urgent worldwide priority, but until the largest, richest economy (that would be us) takes the lead, the rest of the world is unlikely to follow.

On this score, all recent legislative proposals have been disappointing. They have ceilings on the price of emissions, typically limiting it to $40 per ton or less in 2020 ­-- roughly half of what's needed to reach the targeted 20 percent reduction.

Next, who gets the money ­-- or the permits to emit carbon dioxide, which are worth a lot of money? If emission permits are given away to industry, it's businesses and their stockholders that reap the benefit.

If all permits are sold, then the revenues can be refunded to households, as we propose. One recent proposal, the Cantwell-Collins bill, comes closest to our suggested approach, selling all permits and refunding 75 percent of revenues to households. Other leading proposals include large permit giveaways, wait decades to give refunds to most citizens, and divide revenues among many competing uses ­-- some worthy, others pure pork.

The third question is, what else would the policy do to reduce emissions and help build a new, green economy? Investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy can reduce emissions, in concert with price incentives.

These investments should be targeted to the states with the highest per capita emissions ­-- generally those most dependent on coal for electricity generation. Reducing America's reliance on coal is essential to the creation of a new, sustainable energy system. On this point the legislative proposals are more mixed; none seek to phase out coal, but most do invest in efficiency and renewables. Under our plan, 15 percent of revenues remain available after the refunds, and we recommend spending much of this money to reduce emissions and create jobs, especially in the highest-emission states.

If Congress adopts a fair, effective policy when it returns in September ­-- one with the right answers to these three questions ­-- we can do our part to fight climate change, put money in the pockets of most Americans, and start building a green economy.

Elizabeth A. Stanton works at the Stockholm Environment Institute and is a founding member of Economics for Equity and the Environment, a project of Ecotrust.

Frank Ackerman is director of the Climate Economics Group at the Stockholm Environment Institute-U.S. Center, an independent research affiliate of Tufts University in Somerville, Mass. He is also a founding member of Economics for Equity and the Environment.

Also, a policy like this would create billions in investment EE & RE.

[Bruce551]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/aug/06/coal-climate-change

Coal ... the other black teat: Don't expect any climate relief either, according to Daniel Gros, director of the Centre for European Policy Studies. Writing in The Guardian, Gros says our jonesin' for coal will make climate change a done deal:

The U.S. experience has wider implications. If it proved impossible to introduce a moderate carbon tax in a rich economy, it is certain that no commitment will be forthcoming for the next generation from China, which remains much poorer and depends even more on indigenous coal than the U.S. And, after China, India looms as the next emerging coal-based industrial superpower.

Coal: The cheap, dirty and direct route to irreversible climate change

The global dominance of industrial interests dependant on cheap energy sourced from coal mean climate change is inevitable

* Daniel Gros

* guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 August 2010 12.20 BST

Sometimes the most important news is what is not happening. This summer has given us one such example: the climate-change bill, for which President Barack Obama had pushed so hard, will not even be presented to the US Senate, because it stands no chance of passage.

This means that the US is about to repeat its "Kyoto experience". Twenty years ago, in 1990, the US participated (at least initially) in the first global talks aimed at achieving a global accord to reduce CO2 emissions. At the time, the EU and the US were by far the greatest emitters, so it seemed appropriate to exempt the world's emerging economies from any commitment.

Over time, it became apparent that the US would not live up to its commitment, owing, as now, to opposition in the Senate. The EU then went ahead on its own, introducing its path-breaking European Emission Trading System in the hope that Europe could lead by example.

Without the American climate-change package, the promises made by the US administration only seven months ago at the Copenhagen summit have become worthless. The European strategy is in tatters – and not only on the transatlantic front.

China's commitment to increase the CO2 efficiency of its economy by about 3% per year is of no help, because annual GDP growth rates of close to 10% mean that the country's emissions will soar during this decade. Indeed, by 2020, Chinese emissions could be more than triple those of Europe and even surpass those of the US and Europe combined. Exempting emerging markets from any commitments, as the Kyoto protocol sought to do, no longer makes sense.

Why has every attempt to set prices for global carbon emissions failed? The answer can be found in one word: coal – or, rather, the fact that coal is cheap and abundant.

Burning hydrocarbons (natural gas and petrol) yields both water and CO2. By contrast, burning coal yields only C02. Moreover, compared to natural gas and crude oil, coal is much cheaper per ton of CO2 released. This implies that any tax on carbon has a much higher impact on coal than on crude oil (or gas). Owners of coal mines and their clients are, therefore, strongly opposed to any tax on carbon. They constitute a small but well-organised group that wields immense lobbying power to block efforts to limit CO2 emissions by putting a price on them, as the planned US cap-and-trade system would have done.

In Europe, indigenous coal production no longer plays an important economic role. It is thus not surprising that Europe could enact a cap-and-trade system that imposes a carbon price on a large part of its industry. Indeed, the tax seems to fall mostly on foreign suppliers of coal (and to a lesser extend on foreign suppliers of hydrocarbons in the Middle East and Russia). By contrast, opposition by US states whose economies rely significantly on coal production proved decisive for the fate of Obama's climate-change bill.

The US experience has wider implications. If it proved impossible to introduce a moderate carbon tax in a rich economy, it is certain that no commitment will be forthcoming for the next generation from China, which remains much poorer and depends even more on indigenous coal than the US. And, after China, India looms as the next emerging coal-based industrial superpower.

Without any significant commitment from the US, the Copenhagen accord, so laboriously achieved last year, has become meaningless. Business will now continue as usual, both in terms of climate-change diplomacy, with its travelling circus of big international meetings, and in terms of rapidly increasing emissions.

The meetings are aimed at creating the impression that the world's leaders are still working on a solution to the problem. But rising CO2 emissions constitute what is really happening on the ground: a rapidly growing industrial base in emerging markets is being hard-wired to intensive use of coal. This will make it exceedingly difficult to reverse the trend in the future.

A planet composed of nation-states that in turn are dominated by special interest groups does not seem capable of solving this problem. Unfortunately, there is enough cheap coal around to power ever-higher emissions for at least another century. The world will thus certainly become much warmer. The only uncertainty is how much warmer that will be.

Determined action at the global level will become possible only when climate change is no longer some scientific prediction, but a reality that people feel. But, at that point, it will be too late to reverse the impact of decades of excessive emissions. A world incapable of preventing climate change will have to live with it.

• Daniel Gros is director of the Centre for European Policy Studies.

[Bruce551]

Dawn of the brain-dead Senate

Posted By Brad Johnson On September 14, 2010 @ 9:39

http://climateprogress.org/2010/09/14/senate-gop-candidates-deny-scienceclimate-zombies/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+climateprogress/lCrX+(Climate+Progress)

[1]A comprehensive Wonk Room survey [2] of the Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate finds that nearly all dispute the scientific consensus that the United States must act to fight global warming pollution. In May, 2010, the National Academies of Science reported to Congress that “the U.S. should act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions [3] and develop a national strategy to adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change†because global warming is “caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for — and in many cases is already affecting — a broad range of human and natural systems.â€

This finding is shared by scientific bodies around the world [4].

However, in the alternate reality of the fossil-fueled right wing, climate science is confused or a conspiracy, and policies to limit pollution would destroy the economy.

Remarkably, of the dozens of Republicans vying for the 37 Senate seats in the 2010 election, only one — Rep. Mike Castle [5] of Delaware — supports climate action. Even former climate advocates Sen. John McCain [6] (R-AZ) and Rep. Mark Kirk [7] (R-IL) now toe the science-doubting party line. If Castle loses his primary on Tuesday to Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell, the GOP slate will be unanimous in opposition to a green economy.

Many of the Senate candidates are signatories of the Koch Industries’ Americans For Prosperity No Climate Tax [8] pledge and the FreedomWorks Contract From America [9]. The second plank of the Contract From America is to “Reject Cap & Trade: Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures.â€

In reality, a carbon cap-and-trade market — by rewarding work instead of pollution — would increase jobs, lower electricity bills, restore American competitiveness, and forestall a climate catastrophe.

[eagle]

From Bruce's Post:

The global dominance of industrial interests dependant on cheap energy sourced from coal mean climate change is inevitable

I'm noticing more and more that people are called environmentalist as if its a bad thing. In the US people who opposed hydraulic fracturing for natural gas are being put on a watchlist by homeland security. Environmentalists are the enemy of energy greedy companies.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/09/14/5109591-pennsylvania-tracks-fracking-protestors

Seems the power companies are strutting their power over the feds, gulf spill coverup whitewashing ***** suck ups that they are.

[Bruce551]

I think we're headed for a Show down on Clean Energy & Climate Change. Environmentalists and Techies might say ****-it we are voting for Republicans if the Democrats don't pass a bill that puts a price on carbon. What's a little odd is the Tea Party candidates may be the Demos best asset.

We'll see on 10/10/10 Bill McKibben's 350.org climate change day.

[eagle]

I think we're headed for a Show down on Clean Energy & Climate Change. Environmentalists and Techies might say f*ck-it we are voting for Republicans if the Democrats don't pass a bill that puts a price on carbon. What's a little odd is the Tea Party candidates may be the Demos best asset.

We'll see on 10/10/10 Bill McKibben's 350.org climate change day.

Its been a showdown as more extreme weather makes it harder to deny we need to stop the carbon burn. More and more they are calling anyone who is against big oil or gas or coal an environmentalist like thats bad. Like your not a patriot if you question the government.

[koolbreez]

I think we're headed for a Show down on Clean Energy & Climate Change. Environmentalists and Techies might say f*ck-it we are voting for Republicans if the Democrats don't pass a bill that puts a price on carbon. What's a little odd is the Tea Party candidates may be the Demos best asset.

We'll see on 10/10/10 Bill McKibben's 350.org climate change day.

Its been a showdown as more extreme weather makes it harder to deny we need to stop the carbon burn. More and more they are calling anyone who is against big oil or gas or coal an environmentalist like thats bad. Like your not a patriot if you question the government.

The big problem is that the Earth has gone through extreme climate changes before, at least 7 times, without human involvement. Those people that oppose science, aren't opposing that it is happening, they are saying that mankind has nothing to do with it, and that it's just a natural part of the planet's life cycle. By cutting down on the use of anything will have no effect because this is just a natural part of the planet.

That is the big controversy with any scientific finding concerning climate change, and what those that say it's all just hype by the governments use as their justification that there isn't anything we can do anyway, so just continue as we are doing, because it makes no difference in the long term. It will happen anyway.

They do have a point that you will never convince them differently about. We are also at a point on the geological time line that more than justifies their beliefs, that being that we have went longer in geological time since the last hot spell as those time frames between the hot, and cold fluxuations in the past show. What they fail to take into consideration is the standard diviation of roughly 10000 years in those calculations. But that wouldn't make any difference to them anyway, it's still going to happen, just as it has in the past without human involvement.

[eagle]

Koolbreez wrote:

They do have a point

The only point they have is they are ignorant.

[Bruce551]

Seeing China's Push for Clean Energy Up Close: My Visit to Trina Solar

Peter Lehner

Executive Director, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)

September 15, 2010

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-lehner/seeing-chinas-push-for-cl_b_718225.html

While I was traveling in China last week, I visited the headquarters of Trina Solar, one of the largest solar photovoltaic manufacturers in the world.

The tour was very impressive and showed me so clearly what you can accomplish with targeted clean energy policies -- the kind of policies we cannot get through the U.S. Congress.

In China, similar policies are creating thousands of good jobs as well as tax revenue, export sales, and pride in helping shape a prosperous, sustainable future. I was told that the name Trina comes from the word for harmony between the heavens and the people; it's actually pretty fitting.

Trina Solar is only 13-years-old, and it already has more than 10,000 employees and expects to double its sales this year, just as it has in the last four years. Talking with Trina executives, I began to see how China could go from being a bit player in the global PV market to becoming the nation with 50 percent of worldwide sales.

What is truly remarkable is that China made this transition in just five short years.

This rapid growth didn't happen by accident. China's position at the forefront of the clean energy market -- solar PV panels, wind turbines, high-speed rail, ultra-high voltage transmission lines, and electric vehicles, among others -- is the result of a coordinated national effort by the Chinese government. Some issues have recently emerged around the details of this support, but seeing this solar plant firsthand makes me realize what can happen if a government actually focuses on developing a real renewable industry.

China is increasingly recognizing that these new energy industries will be crucial to helping it transition from its current reliance on coal and oil to cleaner, more efficient technologies.

This support for clean energy is a striking contrast to the U.S., which still supports dirty energy much more strongly than clean.

In America, efforts for national legislation to move the country forward are blocked by the fossil fuel industry's spending of hundreds of millions of dollars to lobby Congress. As a result, pollution that even today leads to the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the US is still allowed, and even very modest programs to encourage a sustainable future are viewed with suspicion.

China, meanwhile, is starting to move down a different path. The government passed a Renewable Energy Law that requires power companies to generate a certain amount of their electricity from renewable sources and helps pay for domestic feed-in tariffs for wind and biomass power generation.

And, although 95 percent of Chinese PV panels are currently manufactured for export, the Chinese government is also increasingly supporting installation of PV domestically. It recently put 280 megawatts of PV projects up for bidding, an amount that would double China's current solar PV capacity.

And China's progress in renewable energy development in the last few years is just a taste of what's to come. The country's National Development and Reform Commission will soon release details on an ambitious 5 trillion RMB ($736 billion) clean energy plan for developing China's clean energy industries over the next decade, a proposal that dwarfs current clean energy plans in the United States many times over. Moreover, this week Premier Wen Jiabao announced a package of support policies which NRDC and others will study closely.

When I asked the Deputy Director of Trina's R&D department about the company's future goals, he said Trina wants to continue bringing down the cost and raising the efficiency of their PV panels until they are competitive with fossil fuels. He thinks they can achieve this by streamlining manufacturing, reducing the price of raw materials and components, and creating technology breakthroughs.

Trina executives believe that solar and other renewable energy technologies need some support now to help them scale up and drive down costs, but they know that this support is only temporary and they believe that renewable energy eventually must and can compete on its own.

I felt the same energy and excitement about the future of clean energy when I visited a manufacturer of solar panels in the United States last year. They too were bringing down the cost and improving the efficiency of their product and were optimistic about the role solar PV could play in providing us with safe, sustainable, clean energy. And at that time, they too were expanding with the help of smart government policies that supported clean energy. Yet it is possible that support will become a victim of Congressional paralysis in the coming months.

American clean energy companies lack the consistent support of their own government. In Washington, the Senate has failed to take up the clean energy and climate legislation that would have provided the same kind of long-term investment and strategic advantages to America's clean energy companies that China's government provides to its homegrown clean energy companies.

As a result, America's clean energy companies -- the same companies that created many of the basic technologies behind wind and solar energy decades ago -- risk falling farther and farther behind their global competitors. Despite the U.S. trade deficit and unemployment, and even in the face of the Gulf oil disaster, the US Senate failed to even vote on a clean energy and carbon pollution bill. As the US stays stuck in the mud of demagoguery and fear politics, China is rushing ahead.

And the costs of America's fossil-fuel economy keep rising. In addition to traveling to China this summer, I also spent time in the dirty tar sands oil fields of Alberta and the oil-soaked wetlands of the Gulf of Mexico.

I saw firsthand how America's outdated energy supply takes its toll in the form of devastating environmental disasters, lost lives, lost jobs, closed fisheries, exploding pipelines, and trashed ecosystems that used to sustain livelihoods for nearby residents. (Also see the documentry "GASLAND"

My visit to China confirmed that our misguided energy policies are also costing us jobs and economic opportunity.

As I write in my forthcoming book, In Deep Water, The Anatomy of a Disaster, the Fate of the Gulf, and the How to End Our Oil Addiction, we don't have to settle for this 19th century approach to energy. We can once again take the lead in technological innovation and energy efficiency.

We still have an opportunity to help our clean energy businesses catch up in the global market before it is too late, but we have to start now. China, after all, isn't waiting.

[eagle]

If the US decides to go solar it will probably outsource the jobs to China.

[koolbreez]

If the US decides to go solar it will probably outsource the jobs to China.

Funny you should mention that.....lolol. In a slight reverse on that principle, China is investing $37 million into a solar cell plant in the area I live in right now in the USA.

Their technology, their money, and the research of the PNNL laboratory to advance their technology.

Not quite outsourcing, but as close as you can get. The profit will end up going to the same place.

[eagle]

If the US decides to go solar it will probably outsource the jobs to China.

Funny you should mention that.....lolol. In a slight reverse on that principle, China is investing $37 million into a solar cell plant in the area I live in right now in the USA.

Their technology, their money, and the research of the PNNL laboratory to advance their technology.

Not quite outsourcing, but as close as you can get. The profit will end up going to the same place.

In Pa we have people saying that gas fracking will create jobs to drum up support for the pollution plagued industry, but they are bringing in crews from out of state. I feel the energy monopoly of big oil & coal is holding the reins on alternatives like solar and wind. No reason houses aren't built with wind and solar as a normal intelligent design and we need to do it now. Lots of jobs doing the right thing but the reins of power call the shots.

[koolbreez]

If the US decides to go solar it will probably outsource the jobs to China.

Funny you should mention that.....lolol. In a slight reverse on that principle, China is investing $37 million into a solar cell plant in the area I live in right now in the USA.

Their technology, their money, and the research of the PNNL laboratory to advance their technology.

Not quite outsourcing, but as close as you can get. The profit will end up going to the same place.

In Pa we have people saying that gas fracking will create jobs to drum up support for the pollution plagued industry, but they are bringing in crews from out of state. I feel the energy monopoly of big oil & coal is holding the reins on alternatives like solar and wind. No reason houses aren't built with wind and solar as a normal intelligent design and we need to do it now. Lots of jobs doing the right thing but the reins of power call the shots.

The technology isn't there yet in terms of cost, and that is all anyone looks at. I'm talking out of pocket cost, not cost to society, because not many really care about that. It's the same as corruption, just a world of greedy people.

The cost of alternative energy is not cheaper long term yet. The replacement cost is too high for the short term of use you get from any form of alternative.

Solar cells don't last 20 years yet. The batteries for solar, and wind are the bottleneck. In the electric car market the battery packs last 3-5 years, and cost $4000-$6500 to replace, in a single outlay of cash. They are simply too expensive, with too short of a life span for average individuals to use economically. A small percentage of people can afford the cost, but the majority can't, and until the majority can, there will be no major move away from petrolium, be it oil, or coal, worldwide.

There is no infrastructure in place, and won't be for at least 20 years, to do any alternative on a big scale. That is the bottleneck....no transmition lines to transmit the power, and environmental laws will stop any major power grid from going in anytime soon. It's the not in my backyard principle.

Hydro electric is the most cost effective source of electricity there is, but there will never be another dam built in the USA, and in fact environmental groups are trying to get some dams removed. The environmental costs are high with hydro electric, look at what it's done to the Mekong River system, but hydro electric has low environmental costs when compared to other alternatives on a large scale.

There is major wind power here, but the transmition lines can't handle the load, and no more power lines will be built in this area because people with money think they look ugly on the hilltops, and vote down any environmental issue in their construction. This happens all over the USA. There are documented cases of cancer from living under, or close to, high voltage power lines. There is always a trade off.

[Bruce551]

If the US decides to go solar it will probably outsource the jobs to China.

Funny you should mention that.....lolol. In a slight reverse on that principle, China is investing $37 million into a solar cell plant in the area I live in right now in the USA.

Their technology, their money, and the research of the PNNL laboratory to advance their technology.

Not quite outsourcing, but as close as you can get. The profit will end up going to the same place.

In Pa we have people saying that gas fracking will create jobs to drum up support for the pollution plagued industry, but they are bringing in crews from out of state. I feel the energy monopoly of big oil & coal is holding the reins on alternatives like solar and wind. No reason houses aren't built with wind and solar as a normal intelligent design and we need to do it now. Lots of jobs doing the right thing but the reins of power call the shots.

Jerry, you got it right!!!

[eagle]

If the US decides to go solar it will probably outsource the jobs to China.

Funny you should mention that.....lolol. In a slight reverse on that principle, China is investing $37 million into a solar cell plant in the area I live in right now in the USA.

Their technology, their money, and the research of the PNNL laboratory to advance their technology.

Not quite outsourcing, but as close as you can get. The profit will end up going to the same place.

In Pa we have people saying that gas fracking will create jobs to drum up support for the pollution plagued industry, but they are bringing in crews from out of state. I feel the energy monopoly of big oil & coal is holding the reins on alternatives like solar and wind. No reason houses aren't built with wind and solar as a normal intelligent design and we need to do it now. Lots of jobs doing the right thing but the reins of power call the shots.

Jerry, you got it right!!!

Oil industry is one evil criminal enterprise from day 1.

[koolbreez]

If the US decides to go solar it will probably outsource the jobs to China.

Funny you should mention that.....lolol. In a slight reverse on that principle, China is investing $37 million into a solar cell plant in the area I live in right now in the USA.

Their technology, their money, and the research of the PNNL laboratory to advance their technology.

Not quite outsourcing, but as close as you can get. The profit will end up going to the same place.

In Pa we have people saying that gas fracking will create jobs to drum up support for the pollution plagued industry, but they are bringing in crews from out of state. I feel the energy monopoly of big oil & coal is holding the reins on alternatives like solar and wind. No reason houses aren't built with wind and solar as a normal intelligent design and we need to do it now. Lots of jobs doing the right thing but the reins of power call the shots.

The current story on what is going on with the fracking pollution in PA, and the deniability by those responsible, hired from outside the area, from Houston Texas.

This is typical deniability that goes on all over the world, even in Thailand. There have been whole villages poisoned (with chromium residue in the water), in Thailand from the same type of irresponsibility.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Report: Fracking chemicals in NE Pa. water wells

By MICHAEL RUBINKAM, Associated Press Writer. Michael Rubinkam, Associated Press Writer.

DIMOCK, Pa. – A private consulting firm says it found toxic chemicals in the drinking water of a Pennsylvania community already dealing with methane contamination from natural gas drilling.

Environmental engineer Daniel Farnham said Thursday that his tests, which were verified by three laboratories, found industrial solvents such as toluene and ethylbenzene in "virtually every sample" taken from water wells in Dimock Township, Susquehanna County.

Farnham, who has tested water for both gas interests and for local residents, said it would be impossible to say that the chemicals he found were caused by gas drilling.

The chemicals, at least one of which, ethylbenzene, may cause cancer, are among dozens used to hydraulically fracture shale deposits to unlock natural gas trapped thousands of feet underground. The chemicals are also used in an array of products ranging from paint thinner to gasoline.

The contaminated Dimock wells are in the gas-rich Marcellus Shale, where a rush to tap the vast stores has set off intense debate over the environmental and public health impact of the drilling process. Millions of gallons of water mixed with numerous chemicals and sand are blasted deep into the earth to free gas from the shale rock. As much as 90 percent of the mixture is left underground.

Dimock residents sued Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. last year, alleging the drilling company polluted their wells with methane gas and other contaminants. Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection said defective casings on at least three of Cabot's wells allowed gas to pollute groundwater. Cabot was fined more than $240,000 and ordered to clean up the pollution.

On Thursday, DEP said it would spend about $10.5 million to provide safe water for the affected Dimock residents, connecting their homes to a municipal water supply in Montrose, about six miles away. The residents balked at an earlier fix that would have placed large, whole-house water treatment systems in each of the 14 affected homes.

DEP chief John Hanger told The Associated Press that the connection to public water is "the best, and really only, solution" and that if Cabot balks at paying the tab, the state will pay for the work itself — then go after Cabot for the money.

Officials and residents had discussed another option — drilling a well or wells and piping that water to the homes, but Hanger said it was dropped because "we don't believe that will ensure a permanent, safe supply of water."

A person who took part in the discussions said Hanger told residents the entire aquifer might be polluted by gas drilling operations.

"He said, 'I cannot guarantee that there is any water in the aquifer that is clean today, that will be clean next week, that will be clean six months after the whole system is put in, because of the drilling activity and the damage to the aquifer.' It was repeated twice," said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting

On Tuesday, 13 families in Lenox Township, about eight miles from Dimock, sued another Houston driller, Southwestern Energy Co., claiming their wells were contaminated with fracking fluids. Southwestern denied any problems with its well.

In Dimock, Farnham said the water samples were tested independently by three labs, all of which showed the same results.

But Farnham said it's impossible to tell where the chemicals came from.

"Can anybody say that this came from fracking, or from frack flowback? There's no way a true scientist would be able to make that determination based on the data that we have," he told The Associated Press on Thursday. "Until and unless we are able to put a die or marker in the frack liquid, it's going to be awfully difficult to prove irrefutably that it's coming from frack."

Cabot spokesman George Stark said the chemicals existed in some wells before drilling began.

"We have asked for samples of the affected well water so we can do an independent analysis," he said.

Dimock residents have claimed their wells were contaminated shortly after Cabot started drilling near their homes, saying the water that came out of their faucets suddenly became cloudy, foamy and discolored, and smelled and tasted foul.

One resident's well exploded on New Year's Day 2009, prompting a state investigation that found Cabot had allowed combustible gas to escape into the region's groundwater supplies.

Cabot says the methane in the residents' wells might be naturally occurring.

Farnham — hired by Cabot in 2008 to perform pre-drill testing of residential water wells in Dimock — said those tests did not turn up any problems, adding he did not even test for the chemicals that Cabot claims existed prior to drilling.

After the drilling began, Farnham was asked by residents to test their water, and was later hired by plaintiffs' attorneys.

"It doesn't take me or any scientist to see some of the impacts on the drinking water," he said. "Your drinking water goes from clear and fine, to a week later being yellow-colored, sediment on the bottom, foam on the top and an oily smell to it. It's not a figment of anybody's imagination."

The Dimock test results were first reported by The Times-Tribune of Scranton.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I like that any water supply in the USA has to be tested on a regular basis for drinkability. That is a Federal law, and before this drilling, the water was considered safe to drink even though it's not spelled out in this article.

Just adding the credability to Eagle's statement, so everyone can have an idea as to what he is talking about, and how big oil hides behind deniability.

[Bruce551]

Conservatives' Doubts About Global Warming Grow

http://www.gallup.com/poll/126563/conservatives-doubts-global-warming-grow.aspx

The right’s climate denialism is part of something much larger

by David Roberts 9 Sep 2010

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-09-09-the-rights-climate-denialism-is-part-of-something-much-larger/

Climate denialism is part of something much broader and scarier on the right. The core idea is most clearly expressed by Rush Limbaugh:

"We really live, folks, in two worlds. There are two worlds. We live in two universes. One universe is a lie. One universe is an entire lie. Everything run, dominated, and controlled by the left here and around the world is a lie. The other universe is where we are, and that's where reality reigns supreme and we deal with it. And seldom do these two universes ever overlap. ..."

"The Four Corners of Deceit: Government, academia, science, and media. Those institutions are now corrupt and exist by virtue of deceit. That's how they promulgate themselves; it is how they prosper."

The right's project over the last 30 years has been to dismantle the post-war liberal consensus by undermining trust in society's leading institutions.

Experts are made elites; their presumption of expertise becomes self-damning. They think they're better than you. They talk down to you. They don't respect people like us, real Americans.

The decline in trust in institutions has generated fear and uncertainty, to which people generally respond by placing their trust in protective authorities. And some subset of people respond with tribalism, nationalism, and xenophobia.

[eagle]

Koolbreez wrote:

Just adding the credability to Eagle's statement, so everyone can have an idea as to what he is talking about, and how big oil hides behind deniability.

Protestors of gas fracking have been put on a list by homeland security in PA along with animal activists and gay rights protestors. Appolgies by PA governor Rendell when it got out.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition, a group of about 100 gas drilling and related companies, is paying Tom Ridge’s two firms $900,000 for a year’s contract to help the industry with strategy. Remember Tom Ridge ,america's first homeland security "Czar" and one time Pa governor. :twisted:

[Bruce551]

There must be 10's of thousands of Fracking gas wells. The repeal water safety rules is unbelievable.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 exempted hydraulic fracturing from federal regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

**** Cheny is Satan himself!!!!

Reports of ground water contamination have questioned whether the exemption is appropriate. A complete listing of the specific chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing operations are not currently made available to landowners, neighbors, local officials, or health care providers.

[koolbreez]

There must be 10's of thousands of Fracking gas wells. The repeal water safety rules is unbelievable.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 exempted hydraulic fracturing from federal regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

d*ck Cheny is Satan himself!!!!

Reports of ground water contamination have questioned whether the exemption is appropriate. A complete listing of the specific chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing operations are not currently made available to landowners, neighbors, local officials, or health care providers.

Nice thing the Republican led congress did with deregulation............kill people, but not for a long time down the road, so it would be hard to prove culpibility.

It didn't stop the water from being tested though, and until just recently the water was safe to drink. But culpibility is still at question.

[eagle]

There must be 10's of thousands of Fracking gas wells. The repeal water safety rules is unbelievable.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 exempted hydraulic fracturing from federal regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

d*ck Cheny is Satan himself!!!!

Reports of ground water contamination have questioned whether the exemption is appropriate. A complete listing of the specific chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing operations are not currently made available to landowners, neighbors, local officials, or health care providers.

Nice thing the Republican led congress did with deregulation............kill people, but not for a long time down the road, so it would be hard to prove culpibility.

It didn't stop the water from being tested though, and until just recently the water was safe to drink. But culpibility is still at question.

Some people in Pa are suing and people are bringing in private companies to test water. Gas companies are in for a rough time in PA.

[Bruce551]

"The new energy economy is more decentralized, but it’s less expensive, more job intensive, and parenthetically will save the planet." Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton: Save America’s economy with clean energy (and save the planet)

Posted By Brad Johnson On September 22, 2010 @ 9:11 am In Clean Energy Jobs Bill

Wonk Room is covering the Clinton Global Initiative [1]. This is a cross-post [2] by Brad Johnson.

President Bill Clinton believes the “number one thing†to restore the American economy is clean, efficient energy. In a blogger roundtable at the beginning of his Clinton Global Initiative in New York City, Clinton told us his “favorite ideas†for making the green economy a political and economic reality:

One: Federal loan guarantees for building energy efficiency retrofits

Two: Renewable energy initiatives in economically depressed cities

Three: Green jobs programs for poor Americans

Clinton, relaxed and slim, held court with a dazzling mastery of policy details, wit, and storytelling.

Citing a Center for American Progress report [3] on the promise of energy efficiency, Clinton described his desire for the federal government to kickstart private financing of energy retrofits, much as the Clinton Foundation had done for the Empire State Building [4]:

The Center for American Progress says we can get half the way home to an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2010 by efficiency alone.

Unemployment in construction is 25 percent. We can’t go out and build new houses. And there are very few office buildings that need to be built. So what I think we should do is to have a lot more Empire State Buildings. We should retrofit every public school, every college and university building every hospital, every auditorium in this country, and every office building unencumbered by debt.

Clinton believes the reason that this investment hasn’t already happened is that “spooked†banks don’t want to make loans that could collapse. His solution is to establish a federal loan guarantee program, which he believes could create one million jobs with only $15 billion in federal investment:

Give them a federal guarantee like the SBA guarantee, and you only have to set aside $1 for every $10 you loan. Still very conservative, because we know the historic failure rate is one percent, not ten percent. It might not cost the taxpayers anything.

Here’s the multiple: every billion-dollar investment in retrofits gives you 7000 jobs. Homes 8000. Wind energy 3300 if you build and assemble the windmills where you put them up. Solar 1900, coal 870, nuclear a little over 900. This is not close. If you want to put America back to work, give a loan guarantee, get banks start making loans.

Set aside $15 billion for guarantees, you get $150 billion in bank lending, you get a million jobs.

His other policy ideas are about making the clean energy economy real for the American people, rich and poor:

My second candidate: pick places that are both distressed and full of potential for energy independence. My number one candidate is Nevada, where the sun shine and the wind blows. And you’ve got all those real expensive hotels there with roofs that could be filled with solar panels. And you have all the hills around that could be filled with windmills.

I would say take a few places like that and go straight out and make them energy independent and document how many jobs have been created, and then everybody will want to do that.

My third candidate is prove it works for poor people. One of our best commitments is designed to provide after school jobs and summer jobs for poor kids in Harlem, upper Manhattan Washington heights by paying them to go in and retrofit a lot of these old buildings, whitewashing the black roofs.

If you did those three things so that every day you were proving over and over again to all the naysayers that it was good economics to build a clean energy future, you can build a consensus necessary to do what has to be done. You could beat the special interest groups.

He admitted that the key problem with this vision is that it requires a change from how the energy sector traditionally makes money:

If you make a deal for a nuclear power plant or a coal-fired power plant and you knowingly deprive all these jobs increase greenhouse gas emissions or you increase other risk or you increase huge costs — with nuclear, it’s always more expensive — the only real reason they do it is because they’ve always done it that way, and it is so much simpler. If you’re running the utility, there’s one contractor that’s going to build that plant, there’s one supplier of the fuel, and then you go to one PUC and they give you permission to make the ratepayers pay for it at a profit. It’s simple because it’s centralized.

The new energy economy is more decentralized, but it’s less expensive, more job intensive, and parenthetically will save the planet.

“That’s what I think we have to do,†Clinton concluded. “You’ve got to prove this is good economics. And it is! The number one thing we could do for America is change the way we produce and consume energy.â€

URL to article: http://climateprogress.org/2010/09/22/bill-clinton-save-america%e2%80%99s-economy-with-clean-energy-and-save-the-planet/

There are Energy Retrofit bills pending in the Senate, Home Star ad Building Star similar to Bill Clinton's idea.

It's interesting that Banks worldwide have been building new energy efficient building, including Kasikorn Bank in Thailand.

If Thailand were to take EE in Office Building, Hotels, and Malls seriously it would save billions baht and avoid EGAT's self-destructive Power Development Plan of consisting Nukes & Coal Plants.

[Bruce551]

Thailand Climate Policy

http://www.thaiclimate.org/Eng/index.cfm?cat=8&news=107

28 Sept 09

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva yesterday urged world leaders to cooperate urgently and find a solution to the stalemate in setting greenhouse gas emission targets for nations while Thailand is doing little beyond lip services to reduce its own emissions.

However, Thailand with its emissions ranked 22nd among countries with highest outflows of greenhouse gases has done little in the past decade to contribute to prevent anthropogenic global warming. Kingkorn Naraintarakul of Thai Climate Justice Network said while Thailand does not have the compulsory emissions reduction target, it should set its own voluntary target to combat climate change.

I question Khun Abhisit sincerity regarding Clean Energy & Environmental responsibility, he's just a front man for big money interests in Thailand.

[koolbreez]

Scientific America

Reverse Combustion: Can CO2 Be Turned Back into Fuel?

Various efforts are underway to find a cheap, efficient and scalable way to recycle the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide back into the hydrocarbons that fuel civilization

By David Biello |September 23, 2010

Sandia National Laboratories

In the 1990s a graduate student named Lin Chao at Princeton University decided to bubble carbon dioxide into an electrochemical cell. Using cathodes made from the element palladium and a catalyst known as pyridinium—a garden variety organic chemical that is a by-product of oil refining—he discovered that applying an electric current would assemble methanol from the CO2. He published his findings in 1994—and no one cared.

But by 2003, Chao's successor in the Princeton lab of chemist Andrew Bocarsly was deeply interested in finding a solution to the growing problem of the CO2 pollution causing global climate change. Graduate student Emily Barton picked up where he left off and, using an electrochemical cell that employs a semiconducting material used in photovoltaic solar cells for one of its electrodes, succeeded in tapping sunlight to transform CO2 into the basic fuel.

"The dominant thinking 10 years ago was that we should bury the CO2. But if you could efficiently convert it into something that we wouldn't have to spend all that money and energy to put into the ground, sort of recycle it, that would be better," Bocarsly says. "We take CO2, water, sunlight and an appropriate catalyst and generate an alcoholic fuel."

He adds: "We didn't have some brilliant insight here. We had some luck." Luck that venture capitalists are now trying to turn into cash flow via a start-up known as Liquid Light.

Turning CO2 into fuels is exactly what photosynthetic organisms have been doing for billions of years, although their fuels tend to be foods, like sugars. Now humans are trying to store the energy in sunlight by making a liquid fuel from CO2 and hydrogen—a prospect that could recycle CO2 emissions and slow down the rapid buildup of such greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. "You take electricity and combine CO2 with hydrogen to make gasoline," explained Arun Majumdar, director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA–e) that is pursuing such technology, at a conference in March. "This is like killing four birds with one stone"—namely, energy security, climate change, the federal deficit and, potentially, unemployment.

"When these new technologies get commercialized, those jobs always end up in the U.S.," argues chemical engineer Alan Weimer of the University of Colorado at Boulder, who is working on such solar-fuel generators. Adds chemist Michael Berman of the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, which is funding research into the possibilities of solar fuels, including Bocarsly's work: "The country, and the Air Force, need secure and sustainable sources of energy…. Since the sun provides enough energy for our needs, our goal is to make a fuel using CO2 and sunlight—and maybe water—as feedstocks to produce the chemical fuel that can store the sun's energy in a form that we can use where and when we need."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=turning-carbon-dioxide-back-into-fuel Video attached

[Bruce551]

Peabody Chairman and CEO Boyce: We can only save the poor by destroying them — with coal

Posted By Joe On September 27, 2010 @ 3:10 pm In Greenwashing

The greatest crisis we confront in the 21st Century is not a future environmental crisis predicted by computer models, but a human crisis today that is fully within our power to solve. For too long, too many have been focused on the wrong end game.

For everyone who has voiced a 2050 greenhouse gas goal, we need 10 people and policy bodies working toward the goal of broad energy access. Only once we have a growing, vibrant, global economy providing energy access and an improved human condition for billions of the energy impoverished can we accelerate progress on environmental issues such as a reduction in greenhouse gases.

That would be Gregory H. Boyce Chairman and CEO of Peabody Energy, “the world’s largest private-sector coal company [1].†Last week he “outlined [2] a multi-step plan to eliminate energy poverty and inequality by unlocking the power of coal to advance energy security, generate economic stimulus and create environmental solutions.â€

Yes, the power of coal needs “unlocking.†Poor, imprisoned, climate-destroying coal — can anyone set it free from its rampant growth curve?

Boyce can relax. For everyone who has voiced a 2050 greenhouse gas goal there are 10 people funded by the corporate polluters to shout them down, spread disinformation, or lobby against serious action (see “Dirty Money [3]“).

The rest of us, however, can’t relax because here is the “Peabody Planâ€:

Working to eliminate energy poverty and propelling global economies by ensuring that at least half of new generation is fueled by coal, the dominant global baseload source of power;

Replacing the 1,000 gigawatts of traditional coal plants with supercritical and ultrasupercritical plants, which are more efficient and carbon capture ready;

Developing at least 100 major projects around the world that capture, store or use carbon dioxide from coal-based plants within 20 years;

Deploying significant coal-to-gas, coal-to-chemicals and coal-to-liquids projects around the world over the next 10 years. Such plants are in heavy development in China, and doing so elsewhere would reduce risky reliance on scarce oil and volatile natural gas; and

Commercializing and deploying next generation clean coal technologies to achieve continued environmental improvement and ultimately near-zero emissions.

If even half of that happens, you can pretty much guarantee unending misery and poverty for billions and billions of people in the coming decades (see “An introduction to global warming impacts: Hell and High Water [4]“ and “Congress should say NO to coal-to-diesel [5]).

While I have argued repeatedly on CP that rich countries will be devastated by unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions, we do at least have the wealth to minimize the worst impacts on most of our citizens for many decades. The poor around the world, those Peabody claims to be interested in helping, will find that the livable climate that they had depended upon — the water from glacial melt, relatively stable sea levels, and rainfall and arable land — will slowly vanish for a long, long time (see NOAA stunner: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,†with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe [7]).

The poor will inevitably suffer from the most from the hit that global agriculture takes from human-caused climate change:

Certainly, lifting billions of people out of poverty is a top global priority certainly as important as avoiding catastrophic global warming. But pretending that greenhouse gas emissions do not have an extremely high societal cost right now is to ignore everything we know about science.

That’s why aggressive deployment of energy efficiency and low carbon energy sources — coupled with a high and rising price for CO2 — remains the only rational strategy for people who care about the poor, future generations, and everyone else.

Article printed from Climate Progress: http://climateprogress.org

URL to article: http://climateprogress.org/2010/09/27/peabody-chairman-and-ceo-boyce-we-can-only-save-the-poor-by-destroying-them-with-coal/

Also see the The Rainforest Action Network "Kids Corner"

http://cms.ran.org/new/kidscorner/about_rainforests/

Class materials for teaching kids about Global Warming.