David's EnviroNews Picks

Farmville in San Francisco

2012-08-22T12:59:00.001-07:00

The Bay Guardian
August 22, 2012

n the next few months, San Francisco will lose some of its most beloved urban farms.

The City Hall victory garden is now reduced to dirt. The grants that kept afloat Quesada Gardens Initiative, which creates community gardens in Bayview, were temporary and are now drying up. Kezar Gardens, funded by the Haight Asbury Neighborhood Council recycling center, is facing eviction by the city.

Time is up for Hayes Valley Farm, on the old freeway ramp, where developers are now ready to build condos.

The Catholic Church has also announced that it wants to build on the land that the Free Farm uses at Turk and Gough.

"There's the old joke about developers," said Antonia Roman-Alcalá, co-founder of Alemany Farm and the San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance. "God must be a developer, because they always seem to get their way."

At the same time, new urban agriculture projects have sprung up across San Francisco. Legislation authored by Sup. David Chiu will create a city Urban Agriculture Program, with the goal of coordinating efforts throughout the city.

So is the movement to grow food in the city progressing? It's a tricky question that gets down to one of the oldest conflicts in San Francisco: The best use of scarce, expensive land.

THE VALUE OF FARMING

The San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association lauds the value of community gardens. An April 2012 SPUR report notes that urban agriculture connects people "to the broader food system, offers open space and recreation, provides hands-on education, presents new and untested business opportunities, and builds community."

According to the report, the city had "nearly 100 gardens and farms on both public and private land (not including school gardens)," two dozen of which started in the past four years.

But that's nowhere near enough for the demand. "The last time waiting lists were surveyed, there were over 550 people waiting," Eli Zigas, Food Systems and Urban Agriculture Program Manager at SPUR, told us. "That likely underrepresents demand because some people who are interested haven't put their name down."

Changes in zoning last year, and the recent ordinance to create the Urban Agriculture Program, show a measure of city support for urban farming and gardening.

"We have one of the most permissive zoning codes for urban agriculture that I know of in the country," said Zigas.

One zoning change from 2011 makes it explicit that community gardens and farms less than one acre in size are welcome anywhere in the city, and that projects on larger plots of land are allowed in certain non-residential districts.

More recent legislation is meant to streamline the process of starting to grow food in the city. Applying to use empty public land for a garden can be an arduous process, and every public agency has a different approach. The hoops to jump through for land owned by the Police Department, for example, are entirely different than what the Public Utilities Commission requires. A new Urban Agriculture Program would coordinate efforts.

"The idea is to create a new program that will serve as the main point of entry. Whether it will be managed by existing agency or nonprofit is to be determined," said Zigas.

If the timeline laid out in the ordinance is followed, the plan will be implemented by Jan.1, 2014.

By then, if all goes according to plan, no San Franciscan looking to garden will wait more than a year for access to a community garden plot.

NO NEW LAND

Roman-Alcalá said that efforts to clear the way for urban agriculture are much less controversial than for affordable housing and other tenets of anti-gentrification. But for all the good the latest legislation does, it doesn't secure a single square foot of land for urban agriculture.

"If you look at the language, there's nowhere in it that mandates or prioritizes urban agriculture on any site," said Roman-Alcalá. "The closest thing is a call for an audit of city owned rooftops. That's the closest it comes to changing land use."

And it won't be easy. "No matter how much support there is for urban agriculture, in the end, developers and their ability to make money is going to be prioritized,'" he said. "The only way to really challenge that right now is cultural. Social change is not an event but a process."

Janelle Fitzpatrick, a member of the Hayes Valley Farm Resource Council and a neighborhood resident who has been volunteering at the farm since it started, is committed to that process.

"Hayes Valley Farm proves that when the city, developers, and communities come together, urban agriculture projects can be successful," Fitzpatrick said. She and dozens of other volunteers created the farm, which is now lush with food crops, flowers, and trees. The farm has a bee colony, a seed library, and a green house. It offers yoga and urban permaculture classes.

Hayes Valley Farm started on land that used to be ramps to the Central Freeway before that section was damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake. The land under the freeway was toxic, but volunteers spent six months layering mulch and cardboard and planting fava beans to create soil. It took less than a year to create a productive farm on a lot that had been vacant and overgrown for nearly two decades.

"We're producing food, we're producing community, we're producing education," said Zoey Kroll, another volunteer and resource council member.

When they vacate their land in the winter, many Hayes Valley Farm team members will already be knee deep in new urban agriculture projects. These include Bloom Justice, a flower farm in the Lower Haight that Kroll says will teach job skills like forestry and landscaping. The farm has also built a relationship with Hunters Point Family, working together to offer organic gardening and produce at Double Rock Community Garden at the Alice Griffith Housing Development and Adam Rogers Community Garden.

As for the loss of the current site, Kroll says, "It's an exercise in detachment." Change in landscapes and ownership is part of urban life, she said — "We're a city of renters."

We're also a city of very limited land. "Securing permanent public land for urban agriculture would be challenging," said Kevin Bayuk, an instructor at the Urban Permaculture Institute. "And securing long-term tenure on anything significant, an acre or more of land in San Francisco, if it were on private land, would be cost prohibitive."

Of the city's three largest farms, only Alemany Farm seems secure in its future. The farm is on Recreation and Parks Department land, and has been working with the department since 2005 to create a somewhat autonomous governance structure.

Community gardens on Rec-Park land are subject to a 60-page rulebook, and according to Roman-Alcalá, Alemany Farm's operations were restricted by the rules.

Last week, the group's plan to be reclassified as a farm instead of a garden was approved, eliminating some of the rules and creating an advisory council of community stakeholders that will exert decision making power over the farm, although Rec-Park still has ultimate authority.

"Now it's more secure," said Roman-Alcalá. "We've finally reached this point where the city acknowledges it as a food production site."

"I think the urban agriculture movement is still growing and burgeoning in the grassroots sense," said Bayuk. "And I think some of the grassroots growth is reflected in the policy and code changes. "I'm optimistic for the idea of people putting land into productive use to meet human needs and be a benefit of all life."

Mumbai, Miami on list for big weather disasters

2012-03-28T11:43:00.001-07:00

Associated Press
March 27, 2012

Enlarge Photo

WASHINGTON (AP) — Global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts and heat waves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of deadly and costly weather disasters, an international panel of climate scientists says in a report issued Wednesday.

The greatest danger from extreme weather is in highly populated, poor regions of the world, the report warns, but no corner of the globe — from Mumbai to Miami — is immune. The document by a Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists forecasts stronger tropical cyclones and more frequent heat waves, deluges and droughts.

The 594-page report blames the scale of recent and future disasters on a combination of man-made climate change, population shifts and poverty.

In the past, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, founded in 1988 by the United Nations, has focused on the slow inexorable rise of temperatures and oceans as part of global warming. This report by the panel is the first to look at the less common but far more noticeable extreme weather changes, which recently have been costing on average about $80 billion a year in damage.

"We mostly experience weather and climate through the extreme," said Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, who is one of the report's top editors. "That's where we have the losses. That's where we have the insurance payments. That's where things have the potential to fall apart.

"There are lots of places that are already marginal for one reason or another," Field said. But it's not just poor areas: "There is disaster risk almost everywhere."

The scientists say that some places, particularly parts of Mumbai in India, could become uninhabitable from floods, storms and rising seas. In 2005, over 24 hours nearly 3 feet of rain fell on the city, killing more than 1,000 people and causing massive damage. Roughly 2.7 million people live in areas at risk of flooding.

Other cities at lesser risk include Miami, Shanghai, Bangkok, China's Guangzhou, Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City, Myanmar's Yangon (formerly known as Rangoon) and India's Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta). The people of small island nations, such as the Maldives, may also need to abandon their homes because of rising seas and fierce storms.

"The decision about whether or not to move is achingly difficult and I think it's one that the world community will have to face with increasing frequency in the future," Field said in a telephone news conference Wednesday.

This report — the summary of which was issued in November — is unique because it emphasizes managing risks and how taking precautions can work, Field said. In fact, the panel's report uses the word "risk" 4,387 times.

Field pointed to storm-and-flood-prone Bangladesh, an impoverished country that has learned from its past disasters. In 1970, a Category 3 tropical cyclone named Bhola killed more than 300,000 people. In 2007, a stronger cyclone killed only 4,200 people. Despite the loss of life, the country is considered a success story because it was better prepared and invested in warning and disaster prevention, Field said.

A country that was not as prepared, Myanmar, was hit with a similar sized storm in 2008, which killed 138,000 people.

The study says forecasts that some tropical cyclones — which includes hurricanes in the United States — will be stronger because of global warming, but the number of storms should not increase and may drop slightly.

Some other specific changes in severe weather that the scientists said they had the most confidence in predicting include more heat waves and record hot temperatures worldwide, increased downpours in Alaska, Canada, northern and central Europe, East Africa and north Asia,

IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri told The Associated Press that while all countries are getting hurt by increased climate extremes, the overwhelming majority of deaths are happening in poorer less developed places. That, combined with the fact that richer countries are generating more greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels, makes the issue of weather extremes one of fairness.

However, extremes aren't always deadly. Sometimes, they are just strange.

Study co-author David Easterling of the National Climatic Data Center says this month's heat wave, while not deadly, fits the pattern of worsening extremes. The U.S. has set nearly 6,800 high temperature records in March. Last year, the United States set a record for billion-dollar weather disasters, though many were tornadoes, which can't be linked to global warming.

"When you start putting all these events together, the insurance claims, it's just amazing," Easterling said. "It's pretty hard to deny the fact that there's got to be some climate signal."

Northeastern University engineering and environment professor Auroop Ganguly, who didn't take part in writing the IPCC report, praised it and said the extreme weather it highlights "is one of the major and important types of what we would call 'global weirding.'" It's a phrase that some experts have been starting to use more to describe climate extremes.

Online:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: http://www.ipcc.ch

____

Follow Seth Borenstein at http://twitter.com/borenbears

After failing to reach goals, California attempts to jump-start its 'Hydrogen Highway'

2012-03-26T12:45:00.001-07:00

Contra Costa Times
March 25, 2012

Eight years ago, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger drove a hydrogen-powered Toyota Highlander to UC Davis and, with TV cameras running, promised to build a "hydrogen highway" to help usher in a green revolution in California.

Schwarzenegger signed a plan to build 50 to 100 hydrogen fueling stations by 2010 with state funds and money from oil companies. The plan was mostly hype: Schwarzenegger had announced it without having any binding agreements from oil companies -- and they backed out. Today, only six hydrogen fueling stations statewide are open to the public.

But now, with less fanfare, Gov. Jerry Brown's administration is trying to jump-start the whole effort with a new strategy: forcing oil companies to build the hydrogen stations.

The new approach has environmentalists cheering and Big Oil threatening to sue. And the fate of hydrogen-powered vehicles in California, and likely the entire United States, hangs in the balance.

"The original partnership was a one-sided partnership," said Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board. "The oil companies refused to put up their share. You can't have a partnership with only one side."

In January, the powerful air resources board passed a sweeping set of new "advanced clean car rules" that drew international attention. The rules require automakers to reduce smog-forming emissions 75 percent by 2025 for new cars sold in California. They also require automakers to

sell 1.4 million electric, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen vehicles by 2025 -- 15 percent of all new cars sold in California that year -- or face steep penalties.

'Meat on the bones'

The auto industry endorsed the rules, ending years of legal battles. But buried in the fine print was another plan, one that mandates the state's biggest oil companies to build hydrogen fueling stations once the car companies sign binding commitments to build 10,000 hydrogen-powered vehicles for sale in California.

"We tried to put some meat on the bones," Nichols said. "We told the people who have a monopoly on our transportation fuels that they have to provide some of the fuels we need for this new generation of cars."

The automakers are now saying they can hit the 10,000 target by 2015. They have until August to commit to that goal -- and will face fines if they don't meet it.

The oil companies, meanwhile, are in open revolt.

"Our members support diversifying our energy portfolio, but doing so in ways that are consistent with consumer expectations, sound science and market demand -- not government mandates," said Tupper Hull, a spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Association, an industry trade group.

Large oil companies would be required to build roughly 20 hydrogen fueling stations, at a cost of about $2 million each, every time the auto companies commit to putting 10,000 hydrogen vehicles for sale in any one region.

The first region is expected to be the Los Angeles area, where all six existing hydrogen stations are operating. Although a handful of stations are expected to open in the Bay Area -- one at AC Transit in Emeryville this year and one at San Francisco International Airport in 2013 -- the Bay Area probably won't have a significant number for five years or more. Eventually, hundreds of stations could be required statewide.

The petroleum association claims the state is overstepping its authority and illegally taking private property. Oil companies also insist that they simply don't want to be in the hydrogen business.

In a recent letter to the air board, John Braeutigam, vice president for strategic development of Valero, said the rule would force refiners to "directly compete with their own core business." He added: "As the nation's largest independent refiner, and second-largest producer of corn ethanol, Valero objects to being forced to fund its own demise."

Nichols and environmental groups say California needs to continue to lead the U.S. in reducing smog, greenhouse gases and reliance on foreign oil. They note that although electric car sales are finally taking off with the Nissan Leaf and other models, hydrogen vehicles have more range. The Honda Clarity, for example, which 25 people in Southern California are leasing for $600 a month in a trial program, goes 240 miles on a full tank of hydrogen, at a cost per mile roughly the same as gasoline.

"This is about providing California a future beyond gasoline," said Simon Mui, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Although Shell and Chevron did some limited hydrogen work, Schwarzenegger's original plan failed to meet its goals because oil companies decided they didn't want to partner with the state to build stations. In addition, Democrats in the Legislature approved only half the $50 million in planned funding to help build them, then put strict new standards on the stations, raising costs by requiring that one-third of their electricity come from renewable sources. Then, President Obama slashed federal spending on hydrogen programs, cutting it in half from the levels under the Bush administration.

Lack of demand

Air board officials now predict 50 stations will be open statewide by 2016. The one that will be run by AC Transit in Emeryville is a $10 million project funded by state and federal grants and maintained by Linde, a German gas company. It already powers 12 hydrogen buses and will soon be open to the public.

As recently as 2008, there were 24 hydrogen stations in California. But many closed because of the lack of demand and changing technology.

And the UC Davis station where Schwarzenegger launched the whole "hydrogen highway" idea?

It's also shuttered.

Despite the stumbles, supporters of hydrogen vehicles note that all the major auto companies have now committed to building them in the next five years. And once the stations are there, the supporters say, cars powered by hydrogen will finally take off.

"It's never been done before," said Steve Ellis, a spokesman for Honda. "You learn as you go. It's a slow collaborative process that takes time. But with each success, you build on it -- and it gets better."

“Save The Plastic Bag Coalition” Fights Against Banning Plastic Bags in SF

2012-03-22T11:18:00.001-07:00

Triple Pundit
March 22, 2012
If you thought the debate over the impact of plastic bags is one debate we're already done with, you got it wrong. It's far from being over thanks to Save The Plastic Bag Coalition, an organization that "is questioning and challenging the misinformation, myths, exaggerations, and hype spread by anti-plastic bag activists". The coalition filed a suit earlier this month against the city of San Francisco, which expanded in February its 2007 ban on bags to include the use of single-use plastic bags at all businesses, including restaurants.

The coalition's main legal argument was that the city didn't conduct an environmental impact report (EIR) before enacting the measure, hence violating the California Environmental Control Act.

Besides the legal issue, they're trying to prove two points: First, "paper and compostable bags are significantly worse for the environment than plastic bags." Second, the 10-cent fee that the city wants businesses to charge for a paper or compostable carryout bag "is, or may be, far too low to act as an effective incentive to promote the use of reusable bags." And so, the plastic or paper debate is back in full swing.

First, it is interesting to check out who this coalition with the interesting name, Save The Plastic Bag, actually is. According to their website, the coalition was formed in June 2008 with the sole purpose of informing decision-makers and the public about the environmental impacts of plastic bags, paper bags, and reusable bags. They say "the anti-plastic bag campaign is largely based on myths, misinformation, and exaggerations. We are responding with environmental truth." Accordingly, on the website, you can find information, such as "what is really killing seas turtles. It is not plastic bags!" or 'the oil myth', explaining why it's not true to claim that domestically produced plastic bags are made of oil.

The website also mentions that the coalition "is not and has never been connected with or financed by the American Chemistry Council or Progressive Bag Affiliates. We are a totally independent organization." At the same time, they mention in an early document that "the founding members are Elkay Plastics and Command Packaging," and that the group will include "plastic bag manufacturers, plastic bag distributors, retailers, and concerned citizens." So I guess you don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out why the coalition was dissatisfied San Francisco's decision to broaden its plastic bag ban.

And it's not just San Francisco. A memorandum sent on March 8 by Stephen Joseph, a counsel for the coalition to California cities and counties, states that "Save The Plastic Bag Coalition ("STPB") will sue every city or county that adopts an ordinance that regulates or bans plastic bags at any restaurant or "food facility." He mentions there area a couple of other cases where the coalition filed a lawsuit, such as the case of Santa Cruz County, which was sued for banning plastic bags at restaurants. In response, the county repealed the ban, Joseph writes.

Joseph also mentions in the memorandum that the coalition is filing a lawsuit against Manhattan Beach to invalidate its restaurant ban. Yet, one detail he doesn't mention is that California's highest court has actually upheld the same ban. This case is actually mentioned in the lawsuit against the city of San Francisco because while the court exempted Manhattan Beach from conducting an environmental review, it said that "the analysis would be different for a ban on plastic bags by a larger governmental body, which might precipitate a significant increase in paper bag consumption." Guess who is a larger governmental body? Yep, the city of San Francisco. At least according to the lawsuit.

Not surprisingly, the lawsuit against San Francisco includes a whole part trying to make the case that paper and compostable bags are "far worse for the environment than plastic bags." If you're still into this debate, I'm sure you will find this part interesting. Even if you're one of those who believes 'neither' is the right answer to the paper or plastic question, you might find some interesting statements in the lawsuit, such as the part focusing on the question of how large the fee on non-plastic single-use bags should be. According to the lawsuit, in the original draft ordinance, the City of San Francisco was planning to increase the paper and compostable bag fee to 25 cents on July 1, 2014, yet the fee in the ordinance has been set on 10 cents with no increase.

This fee question is important because the new ban means there's a good chance more paper bags will be used in San Francisco. The city believes the net impact will still be positive due to a 10-cent paper and compostable bag fee that will incentivize residents to carry reusable bags. But is this really the case? It's certainly not clear.

It seems that the strategy of the coalition is to use the EIR as a tactical weapon. "We haven't challenged anyone that's done an EIR," Joseph told the San Francisco Examiner. The reason the coalition might have chosen this tactic is that completing EIRs can take years and can be prohibitively costly for many municipalities, especially in California.

Now, it doesn't mean that the process of conducting EIR is necessarily wrong, especially given the need for transparency when it comes to enacting a fee on single-use bags. But why does every municipality need to conduct a new report? Can't they all use one report and make minor adjustments accordingly? This is for the court to decide. Let's just hope it will finish the plastic or paper debate once and for all and let us move on.

[Image credit: cucchiaio, Flickr Creative Commons]

Raz Godelnik is the co-founder of Eco-Libris, a green company working to green up the book industry in the digital age. He is an adjunct faculty at the University of Delaware's Department of Business Administration, CUNY and the New School, teaching courses in green business and new product development.

Controversial strawberry pesticide pulled from US

2012-03-21T12:00:00.001-07:00

Associated Press
March 21, 2012

FRESNO, Calif. -- The maker of a controversial strawberry pesticide said it's pulling all sales of the chemical from the U.S. market, surprising growers and environmentalists.

Tokyo-based Arysta LifeScience Inc. said late Tuesday that it's immediately suspending the sale, marketing and production of all formulations of the fumigant Midas, or methyl iodide in the U.S.

The company said the decision is based on the product's economic viability in the United States.

California regulators approved use of methyl iodide in December 2010 despite opposition from scientists and environmental and farmworker groups who claim it's highly toxic and can cause cancer. Environmentalists and public health advocates have since been pressuring Gov. Jerry Brown's administration to reconsider the decision.

An Alameda County Superior Court judge was expected to rule soon on a lawsuit by environmentalists who asked the state to vacate approval for the fumigant.

The chemical, which is injected into soil, kills bugs, weeds and plant diseases. It's used by some growers of tomatoes, peppers and other crops. In California, it was primarily targeted for use by the large strawberry industry.

Methyl iodide was widely seen as a replacement for another fumigant, methyl bromide, which is being phased out under international treaty because it depletes the Earth's ozone. The new fumigant was approved by the U.S. EPA and registered in 48 states.

Arysta officials said methyl iodide was applied "without a single safety violation" on 17,000 acres across the southeast - a tiny fraction of farmland - since it was first registered five years ago.

But the new fumigant never took off in California. Only five applications - all under five acres - took place since the state registered the pesticide. That included a single strawberry farmer using the chemical on a small test site.

Arysta officials said the company will continue to maintain the federal Midas label registered with the EPA. The company will also assess whether to maintain registration with the 48 states

Environmentalists who clamored to get the chemical off the market hailed the unexpected decision and attributed it to their political and legal pressure. They said the news comes just in time for spring strawberry season.

"This is a pleasant surprise and a huge victory, especially for rural residents and farmworkers across the country," said Paul Towers of Pesticide Action Network. "Arysta saw the writing on the wall and chose to pull their cancer-causing methyl iodide product."

It's unclear how the company's decision will affect the pending lawsuit. California Department of Pesticide Regulation spokeswoman Lea Brooks said Arysta has not requested voluntary cancellation of the fumigant's registration.

The strawberry industry was also surprised by the decision, said Carolyn O'Donnell, communications director for the California Strawberry Commission. Growers are concerned, O'Donnell said, about the future implications of methyl iodide being pulled off the shelves while methyl bromide is being phased out.

In recent years, the Strawberry Commission has poured more than $12 million into university research to look at alternatives to fumigation, such as crop rotation, eliminating soil pathogens by using natural sources of carbon and sterilizing soil with steam.

And earlier this month, the commission and the California Department of Pesticide Regulation announced a research partnership looking for alternatives to fumigants. The $500,000, three-year project is will focus on growing strawberries in peat, tree bark or other non-soil substances that are disease-free.

While alternatives are being developed, some growers are still relying on methyl bromide, the fumigant that's being phased out, while others have switched to fumigants such as chloropicrin and metam sodium, O'Donnell said.

Part of the reason why growers might have been reluctant to use methyl iodide, O'Donnell said, is because the regulations were so strict.

"People like to live where strawberries like to grow," O'Donnell said. "A lot of times, because of that, the rules excluded a lot of the acres from being fumigated."

Why the Most Environmental Building is the Building We've Already Built

2012-03-05T10:26:00.001-08:00

January 24, 2012
Atlantic Cities
Emily Badger Reuters

Reusing an old building pretty much always has less of an impact on the environment than tearing it down, trashing the debris, clearing the site, crafting new materials and putting up a replacement from scratch. This makes some basic sense, even without looking at the numbers.

But what if the new building is super energy-efficient? How do the two alternatives compare over a lifetime, across generations of use?

"We often come up against this argument that, 'Oh well, the existing building could never compete with the new building in terms of energy efficiency,'" says Patrice Frey, the director of sustainability for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "We wanted to model that."

Preservation Green Lab, the Trust's sustainability think tank, has published a new study today examining this that puts big numbers behind the finding that the greenest buildings aren't in fact state-of-the-art ones; they're the ones we already have.

Retrofit an existing building to make it 30 percent more efficient, the study found, and it will essentially always remain a better bet for the environment than a new building built tomorrow with the same efficiencies. Take that new, more efficient building, though, and compare its life cycle to an average existing structure with no retrofitting, and it could still take up to 80 years for the new one to make up for the environmental impact of its initial construction.

The study looked at six types of buildings set in cities from four different climates: Phoenix, Chicago, Atlanta and Portland, Oregon. The building typologies modeled were commercial offices, warehouse conversions, urban village mixed-use buildings, elementary schools, single-family homes and multi-family residences. From every single one of these categories, in every climate, retrofitting the existing building produces less of an environmental impact than constructing a new one on the same plot of land. The lone exception was warehouses conversions to multi-family residences, a more intensive form of reuse.

The most interesting data lies in how new buildings compare to existing ones if we don't even bother to retrofit them. This chart from the report shows how much time it would take for a new building that's 30 percent more efficient to overcome – through all that efficiency – the impact of its construction (much of which lies in the use of all that new material).

This means that you could put up a new mixed-use building in Portland that's 30 percent more efficient than an otherwise identical one across the street that already exists. It would still take 80 years for that new building to have – over its entire life cycle – the better environmental impact. That conclusion contradicts the common perception that we may innovate our way out of climate change with ever more efficient new stuff.

"This is a strategy that most policy-makers aren't thinking about," Frey says. "Everyone wants a monument, a shiny new thing to put their name on, to make their mark. And I think some of it is just a cultural preference for new. We have a real estate industry that really – at least before the Great Recession – wasn't particularly well attuned to dealing with existing buildings. The model was demolish the site, clear the site and build from scratch. That was the calculus they were used to."

Some older estimates suggest that we have been demolishing and replacing about 1 billion square feet of buildings in the U.S. each year (OK, probably not during the economic downturn). And the Brookings Institution has projected that we could turn over as much as a quarter of all of our building stock by 2030.

In this context, Preservation Green Lab's study suggests the city of Portland, for example, could meet 15 percent of its emissions-reduction goals over the next decade just by reusing the 1 percent of its buildings the city expects to demolish over that time. That's not to say the most decrepit house must be saved (although that would make for a good Portlandia episode).

"We're not coming out and saying 'all buildings have to be reused,' and 'all new construction is bad,'" Frey says. "What we're advocating for is a shift in thinking, where at a minimum, we're considering the environmental impacts associated with demolishing places before we tear them down and build something new."

Oh, and doing this would also give a bunch of us jobs!

Photo credit: Robert Galbraith/Reuters

Leak Offers Glimpse of Campaign Against Climate Science

2012-02-21T12:06:00.001-08:00

New York Times

February 15, 2012

Richard Perry/The New York Times

The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, a gathering in Times Square of skeptics on global warming.

By JUSTIN GILLIS and LESLIE KAUFMAN

¶ Leaked documents suggest that an organization known for attacking climate science is planning a new push to undermine the teaching of global warming in public schools, the latest indication that climate change is becoming a part of the nation's culture wars.

¶ The documents, from a nonprofit organization in Chicago called the Heartland Institute, outline plans to promote a curriculum that would cast doubt on the scientific finding that fossil fuel emissions endanger the long-term welfare of the planet. "Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective," one document said.

¶ While the documents offer a rare glimpse of the internal thinking motivating the campaign against climate science, defenders of science education were preparing for battle even before the leak. Efforts to undermine climate-science instruction are beginning to spread across the country, they said, and they fear a long fight similar to that over the teaching of evolution in public schools.

¶ In a statement, the Heartland Institute acknowledged that some of its internal documents had been stolen. But it said its president had not had time to read the versions being circulated on the Internet on Tuesday and Wednesday and was therefore not in a position to say whether they had been altered.

¶ Heartland did declare one two-page document to be a forgery, although its tone and content closely matched that of other documents that the group did not dispute. In an apparent confirmation that much of the material, more than 100 pages, was authentic, the group apologized to donors whose names became public as a result of the leak.

¶ The documents included many details of the group's operations, including salaries, recent personnel actions and fund-raising plans and setbacks. They were sent by e-mail to leading climate activists this week by someone using the name "Heartland insider" and were quickly reposted to many climate-related Web sites.

¶ Heartland said the documents were not from an insider but were obtained by a caller pretending to be a board member of the group who was switching to a new e-mail address. "We intend to find this person and see him or her put in prison for these crimes," the organization said.

¶ Although best-known nationally for its attacks on climate science, Heartland styles itself as a libertarian organization with interests in a wide range of public-policy issues. The documents say that it expects to raise $7.7 million this year.

¶ The documents raise questions about whether the group has undertaken partisan political activities, a potential violation of federal tax law governing nonprofit groups. For instance, the documents outline "Operation Angry Badger," a plan to spend $612,000 to influence the outcome of recall elections and related fights this year in Wisconsin over the role of public-sector unions.

¶ Tax lawyers said Wednesday that tax-exempt groups were allowed to undertake some types of lobbying and political education, but that because they are subsidized by taxpayers, they are prohibited from direct involvement in political campaigns.

¶ The documents also show that the group has received money from some of the nation's largest corporations, including several that have long favored action to combat climate change.

¶ The documents typically say that those donations were earmarked for projects unrelated to climate change, like publishing right-leaning newsletters on drug and technology policy. Nonetheless, several of the companies hastened on Wednesday to disassociate themselves from the organization's climate stance.

¶ "We absolutely do not endorse or support their views on the environment or climate change," said Sarah Alspach, a spokeswoman for GlaxoSmithKline, a multinational drug company shown in the documents as contributing $50,000 in the past two years to support a medical newsletter.

¶ A spokesman for Microsoft, another listed donor, said that the company believes that "climate change is a serious issue that demands immediate worldwide action." The company is shown in the documents as having contributed $59,908 last year to a Heartland technology newsletter. But the Microsoft spokesman, Mark Murray, said the gift was not a cash contribution but rather the value of free software, which Microsoft gives to thousands of nonprofit groups.

¶ Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the Heartland documents was what they did not contain: evidence of contributions from the major publicly traded oil companies, long suspected by environmentalists of secretly financing efforts to undermine climate science.

¶ But oil interests were nonetheless represented. The documents say that the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation contributed $25,000 last year and was expected to contribute $200,000 this year. Mr. Koch is one of two brothers who have been prominent supporters of libertarian causes as well as other charitable endeavors. They control Koch Industries, one of the country's largest private companies and a major oil refiner.

¶ The documents suggest that Heartland has spent several million dollars in the past five years in its efforts to undermine climate science, much of that coming from a person referred to repeatedly in the documents as "the Anonymous Donor." A guessing game erupted Wednesday about who that might be.

¶ The documents say that over four years ending in 2013, the group expects to have spent some $1.6 million on financing the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, an entity that publishes periodic reports attacking climate science and holds lavish annual conferences. (Environmental groups refer to the conferences as "Denialpalooza.")

¶ Heartland's latest idea, the documents say, is a plan to create a curriculum for public schools intended to cast doubt on mainstream climate science and budgeted at $200,000 this year. The curriculum would claim, for instance, that "whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy."

¶ It is in fact not a scientific controversy. The vast majority of climate scientists say that emissions generated by humans are changing the climate and putting the planet at long-term risk, although they are uncertain about the exact magnitude of that risk. Whether and how to rein in emissions of greenhouse gases has become a major political controversy in the United States, however.

¶ The National Center for Science Education, a group that has had notable success in fighting for accurate teaching of evolution in the public schools, has recently added climate change to its agenda in response to pleas from teachers who say they feel pressure to water down the science.

¶ Mark S. McCaffrey, programs and policy director for the group, which is in Oakland, Calif., said the Heartland documents revealed that "they continue to promote confusion, doubt and debate where there really is none."

¶Steven Yaccino contributed reporting from Chicago.

A version of this article appeared in print on February 16, 2012, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: In Documents, a Plan to Discredit Climate Teaching.

Get 50% Off The New York Times & Free All Digital Access.

Get Free E-mail Alerts on These Topics

Ads by Google	what's this?
Honda Hydrogen Fuel Cells Watch the film to see how hydrogen fuels Honda's Undying Dream. www.honda.com

What's Popular Now

New Life, From an Arctic Flower That Died 32,000 Years Ago

Physicists Create a Working Transistor From a Single Atom

Renato Dulbecco, 97, Dies; Won Prize for Cancer Study

Activist Says He Lied to Obtain Climate Papers

Observatory

Changes in Weather Add to Birds' Marital Woes

PRESENTED BY

What's This? | Don't Show

Beatlemania for tots

Also in Arts »

Ads by Google	what's this?
Fuel Cell More Reliable Than The Grid. Reduce Your Power Costs. Learn More Today! ClearEdgePower.com
Take Me Home Tonight A One-Touch Ride in San Francisco. Order on iPhone. First Ride Free! www.side.cr
Vintage Golden Gate Assisted Living & Memory Care. Caring Community San Francisco CA www.VintageSenior.com

Roundup in city-dwellers' urine

2012-02-21T08:34:00.001-08:00

Institute for Responsible Technology
February 20, 2012

Studies have already found Monsanto's toxic herbicide Roundup in groundwater, in streams, and even in the rain and air of US agricultural areas. It's been found in our blood and even crosses the placental barrier to enter our unborn fetuses. So are we surprised that a German university study has now found significant concentrations of Roundup's main ingredient glyphosate in the urine of city dwellers?

Perhaps we should be surprised at the amount: all the samples had concentrations of glyphosate at 5 to 20 times the limit for drinking water.

Roundup is used on railway lines, urban pavements, and roadsides. It's used to dry down grain crops before harvest. But the single greatest use of Roundup is on genetically engineered "Roundup Ready" crops - designed not to die when sprayed with the poison.

Wouldn't it be good if we too were Roundup Ready, so we wouldn't get sick or die due to the virtually omnipresent toxin? After all, studies now link it to birth defects, endocrine disruption, cancer, and abnormal sperm.

As Roundup is a best-selling product worldwide and there are massive profits hanging on its continued use, the new testing initiative has fallen prey to the usual attempts at disinformation, distortion, and intimidation. Note the excerpt from the story: "The address of the university labs, which did the research, the data and the evaluation of the research method is known to the editors. Because of significant pressure by agrochemical representatives and the fear that the work of the lab could be influenced, the complete analytical data will only be published in the course of this year." [Read the Article]

Environmentalists were the 99%

2012-02-06T12:29:00.001-08:00

Huffington Post
February 6, 2012

These are not easy times for the green movement. In fact, according to the NY Times: "If there was a tougher moment over the last 40 years to be a leader in the American environmental movement, it would be hard to put your finger on it."

Yes, 2011 was rough. Gallup reported that Americans are more willing to let the environment suffer to boost the economy than at any other time since polling on this question began in 1984. According to Yale and George Mason Universities, the number of Americans who are "very worried" about our climate has fallen sharply, to a mere nine percent, despite two decades of warnings that man-made climate change could rob us of everything we hold dear.

We greens aren't exactly racking up Occupy Wall Street numbers, are we?

Anti-environmentalists in Congress know this and are having a field day, gleefully making irrational moves like blocking new standards for incandescent light bulbs that would have cut pollution, saved money and created jobs. Environmental groups and our allies in Congress dutifully protest such boneheaded acts -- but where is the public outrage?

Perhaps the recession alone is to blame for the big green chill and we'll come roaring back when economic conditions improve. But I wouldn't bet on it and neither should you. This could be an "adapt or die" moment, for the environmental movement.

Here are three ideas to consider, as we greens search for our missing mojo:

Fight harder for social and economic sustainability. It's easier to stop an environmentally-harmful project when there are safer, cleaner alternatives that achieve the same social and economic goals. The more we help promote such alternatives, the more likely we'll be to win our own battles.

Take Hydrofracking, for example. Fracking has done enormous damage to people's health, to air and water quality, and to rural landscapes. But the fact that fracking isn't safe may not be enough to stop it. After all, President Obama himself delivered a veritable infomercial for fracking during his State of the Union address, pushing it as a source of cheap, reliable energy.

We can shoot back that fracking only looks cheap because the retail price doesn't take into account the damage fracking does. We can argue that its reliability is also doubtful, now that the Energy Department has cut its estimate of recoverable reserves. But, what if we coupled these arguments with an all-out enviro push for greater investment in scalable alternatives like retrofitting power plants and increasing energy efficiency in homes and businesses? Not only can such measures create over a million jobs and generate huge sales of American-made materials, they would also reduce the need for natural gas and increase our chances of winning the fracking wars.

This doesn't mean that we wouldn't go to court to stop fracking from trashing air, water and public health. Riverkeeper and others sued when the Delaware River Basin Commission proposed new fracking rules without first doing any environmental review [the rules were subsequently withdrawn] and we'll sue New York State on fracking if we have to. But it will take more than a successful fight against fracking to put us on the path to long-term energy sustainability, which is where we really need to be, isn't it?

Turbocharge the grass roots. Whether or not you agree with Margaret Mead that local volunteer activists are the only ones who can change the world, you probably would accept the notion that we aren't exactly beating climate change from the top-down. In fact, the only time this Congress even considers environmental issues is when they vote on the latest proposal to gut the Clean Water Act or one of the other resource protection laws that have served this country well for decades. In a hostile climate like this, we'd all do well to remember that professional environmental groups -- no matter how much staff they have or how big their budgets -- don't vote or pay taxes. Volunteer citizen activists do. That gives them leverage the big groups don't have, especially at the local level.

In some very fundamental ways, volunteer activists and professional environmental groups need one another to get anything meaningful accomplished. Riverkeeper complained for years about failing sewage infrastructure and increasing bacteria levels in the Hudson, but investment in water treatment systems just kept falling. Now that there are nearly a dozen volunteer groups out taking water quality samples on the Hudson and lobbying their local officials, investment in water treatment facilities is finally back on the public agenda in a growing number of river communities.

Share leadership with the next generation. Fifty may be the new 40, but how gray can the movement get before it blows any real chance to renew organizational leadership? And, more immediately: At 50 and up, do we really understand what it will take to rebuild membership in the Occupy era?

So, fellow non-profit leaders: What are you doing to bridge the gap? Have you begged, borrowed or stolen the resources you need to hire young environmentalists? When you do, are you finding leadership roles for them as soon as they're ready for it? We're not going to reverse those plummeting poll numbers any other way.

* * *

Environmentalists were the original "99%." We can get back to that kind of popular support, by promoting social and economic recovery, empowering local activists and passing the torch to the generation whose future is most at stake. Of course, given the enormity of the environmental challenges ahead, we'd better start soon.

Expert: Wastewater well in Ohio triggered quakes

2012-01-04T10:18:00.001-08:00

Yahoo News
January 2, 2012

CLEVELAND (AP) — A northeast Ohio well used to dispose of wastewater from oil and gas drilling almost certainly caused a series of 11 minor quakes in the Youngstown area since last spring, a seismologist investigating the quakes said Monday.

Research is continuing on the now-shuttered injection well at Youngstown and seismic activity, but it might take a year for the wastewater-related rumblings in the earth to dissipate, said John Armbruster of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y.

Brine wastewater dumped in wells comes from drilling operations, including the so-called fracking process to extract gas from underground shale that has been a source of concern among environmental groups and some property owners. Injection wells have also been suspected in quakes in Ashtabula in far northeast Ohio, and in Arkansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma, Armbruster said.

Thousands of gallons of brine were injected daily into the Youngstown well that opened in 2010 until its owner, Northstar Disposal Services LLC, agreed Friday to stop injecting the waste into the earth as a precaution while authorities assessed any potential links to the quakes.

After the latest and largest quake Saturday at 4.0 magnitude, state officials announced their beliefs that injecting wastewater near a fault line had created enough pressure to cause seismic activity. They said four inactive wells within a five-mile radius of the Youngstown well would remain closed. But they also stressed that injection wells are different from drilling wells that employ fracking.

Armbruster said Monday he expects more quakes will occur despite the shutdown of the Youngstown well.

"The earthquakes will trickle on as a kind of a cascading process once you've caused them to occur," he said. "This one year of pumping is a pulse that has been pushed into the ground, and it's going to be spreading out for at least a year."

The quakes began last March with the most recent on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve each occurring within 100 meters of the injection well. The Saturday quake in McDonald, outside of Youngstown, caused no serious injuries or property damage.

Youngstown Democrat Rep. Robert Hagan on Monday renewed his call for a moratorium on fracking and well injection disposal to allow a review of safety issues.

"If it's safe, I want to do it," he said in a telephone interview. "If it's not, I don't want to be part and parcel to destruction of the environment and the fake promise of jobs."

He said a moratorium "really is what we should be doing, mostly toward the injection wells, but we should be asking questions on drilling itself."

A spokesman for Gov. John Kasich, an outspoken supporter of the growing oil and natural gas industry in Ohio, said the shale industry shouldn't be punished for a fracking byproduct.

"That would be the equivalent of shutting down the auto industry because a scrap tire dump caught fire somewhere," said Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols.

He said 177 deep injection wells have operated without incident in Ohio for decades and the Youngstown well was closed within 24 hours of a study detailing how close a Christmas Eve quake was to the well.

The industry-supported Ohio Oil and Gas Association said the rash of quakes was "a rare and isolated event that should not cast doubt about the effectiveness" of injection wells.

Such wells "have been used safely and reliably as a disposal method for wastewater from oil and gas operations in the U.S. since the 1930s," the association's executive vice president, Thomas E. Stewart, said in a statement Monday.

Environmentalists are critical of the hydraulic fracturing process, called fracking, which utilizes chemical-laced water and sand to blast deep into the ground and free the shale gas. Critics fear the process itself or the drilling liquid, which can contain carcinogens, could contaminate water supplies, either below ground, by spills, or in disposed wastewater.

Permits allowing hydraulic fracturing in Ohio's portion of the Marcellus and the deeper Utica Shale formations rose from one in 2006 to at least 32 in 2011.

CEQA covers impact of projects on environment, not impact of environment on projects

2011-12-07T13:53:00.001-08:00

Manatt News

December 6, 2011

Court Rejects the Need for CEQA Analysis of Sea Level Rise and Invalidates CEQA Guideline

Author: Kristina D. Lawson

CEQA Does Not Require Analysis of Significant Effects of the Environment on Projects

In an opinion ordered published last Friday, December 2, 2011 (originally filed November 9, 2011), the Second District Court of Appeal held that the City of Los Angeles was not required to discuss the impact of sea level rise as a result of global climate change on a proposed mixed-use development project. (Ballona Wetlands Land Trust, et al. v. City of Los Angeles (2009) ___ Cal.App.4th ___ (Nov. 9, 2011, Case No. B231965).) The court restated its prior conclusion that "the purpose of an EIR is to identify the significant effects of a project on the environment, not the significant effects of the environment on the project." (See City of Long Beach v. Los Angeles Unified School Dist. (2009) 176 Cal.App.4th 889, 905.)

The court also upheld the City's determination that the project site would not be subject to inundation as a result of sea level rise, finding substantial evidence in the record to support the City's determination. It should be noted that while not specifically addressed in Ballona Wetlands, projects located in floodplains or areas subject to inundation may remain subject to CEQA's mandate that environmental impacts of projects be identified, analyzed, and mitigated if the project may have an impact on the physical environment, such as by causing a diversion of floodwaters due to new construction.

The court joined the Fourth District Court of Appeal in declaring Section 15126.2 and portions of the Appendix G checklist unauthorized and therefore invalid. On June 30, 2011, the Fourth District similarly rejected a challenge related to general plan and zoning amendments to allow more intensive residential development, holding that the impact of noxious odors on future residents of the development was not a potentially significant environmental impact of the development project. (South Orange County Wastewater Authority v. City of Dana Point (2011) 196 Cal.App.4th 1604, 1614-1618.) Both District Courts of Appeal affirmed agreement with the more than fifteen-year-old decision in Baird v. County of Contra Costa (1995) 32 Cal.App.4th 1464.

It is anticipated that one or more of petitioners in the case will petition the California Supreme Court for review. As the scope of environmental review and analysis under the California Environmental Quality Act ("CEQA"; Pub. Resources Code, §§ 21000 et seq.) seems to be ever-expanding, CEQA practitioners across disciplines have long sought judicial clarification on the issue presented in Ballona Wetlands to inform their preparation of EIRs. While review by the Supreme Court is a matter of discretion and therefore not guaranteed, this case does present an opportunity for the Court to resolve an important question of law.

Case Summary
The Ballona Wetlands Land Trust, Anthony Morales, Surfrider Foundation, and Ballona Ecosystem Education Project ("BEEP") challenged the City of Los Angeles' certification of a revised EIR for the Playa Vista phase two project. The project, which is located south of Marina del Rey within the City of Los Angeles, is known as the Village. Phase one of the project is home to affordable and luxury housing, office and commercial space, and open space and recreational amenities.

The City first completed and certified a final EIR for the phase two project in April 2004. Various parties, including Ballona Wetlands, challenged the City's certification of the original EIR and the project approvals. After several years of litigation, the City was ordered to vacate its certification of the EIR and project approvals, and to revise the EIR to remedy three identified deficiencies. The City complied with the order and revised and supplemented the EIR. The draft EIR circulated for public comment in January 2009 included a new section discussing the impacts of global climate change, and revised sections relating to land use, archaeological resources, and wastewater. The revised EIR was certified and the project approved in the spring of 2010, and the City filed a return to the writ of mandate stating that it had complied with the court's 2008 order. Ballona Wetlands filed objections to the return, and BEEP filed a new petition for writ of mandate challenging the certification of the revised EIR and project approvals. The cases were consolidated at the trial court level.

Ballona Wetlands and BEEP specifically challenged the adequacy of the EIR's project description, analysis of archaeological resources and sea level rise resulting from global climate change, and the finding of no significant impact on land use consistency. They also challenged an award of costs to the City and the real party in interest, Playa Capital Company, LLC.

The revised EIR included a new section on global climate change that addressed the project's contribution to the cumulative impact of global climate change through its greenhouse gas emissions. The revised EIR also noted that global warming could result in a rise in sea level and the inundation of coastal areas. Ballona Wetlands argued, first in comment letters and then in litigation, that the EIR was inadequate because it failed to address the impacts of sea level rise resulting from global climate change.

The court addressed the proper scope of an EIR's environmental impact analysis, finding that Section 15126.2(a) of the CEQA Guidelines mandates environmental review in a manner inconsistent with CEQA's legislative purpose and not required by CEQA. Section 15126.2(a) provides, in pertinent part:

The EIR shall also analyze any significant environmental effects the project might cause by bringing development and people into the area affected. For example, an EIR on a subdivision astride an active fault line should identify as a significant effect the seismic hazard to future occupants of the subdivision. The subdivision would have the effect of attracting people to the location and exposing them to hazards found there. Similarly, the EIR should evaluate any potentially significant impacts of locating development in other areas susceptible to hazardous conditions (e.g., floodplains, coastlines, wildfire risk areas) as identified in authoritative hazard maps, risk assessments or in land use plans addressing such hazards areas.

The court found Section 15126.2's requirement to identify the effects on the project and its users of locating the project in a particular environmental setting inconsistent with and unauthorized under CEQA. Guidelines provisions that are unauthorized by CEQA are invalid.

The court also rejected certain questions included in the CEQA Guidelines Appendix G checklist that concern the exposure of people or structures to environmental hazards because those questions could be construed to seek information about the effects on users of the project and structures in the project of preexisting environmental hazards.

On the substantive climate change issues that the court determined were properly within the scope of CEQA's mandated environmental review, the court concluded that the EIR's discussion of climate change impacts, including impacts of the project on the surrounding area, was adequate.

With respect to the EIR's analysis of archaeological resources, the court determined that the revised EIR adequately discussed preservation in place as the preferred manner to mitigate impacts on historic archaeological resources. (See CEQA Guidelines, § 15126.4(b)(3).) The court rejected petitioners' land use consistency arguments on the grounds that the claims were barred by res judicata because they could have been asserted before the entry of judgment in the prior proceeding and the material facts have not changed.

Lastly, the court confirmed that the City and real party in interest were prevailing parties in the 2010 proceedings and judgment, and were entitled to recover their costs. The court rejected Ballona Wetlands and BEEP's claims that they were prevailing parties because they successfully petitioned for a writ of mandate.

Thawing permafrost vents gases to worsen warming

2011-12-06T11:38:00.001-08:00

AP
November 30, 2011

By SETH BORENSTEIN | AP – Wed, Nov 30, 2011

WASHINGTON (AP) — Massive amounts of greenhouse gases trapped below thawing permafrost will likely seep into the air over the next several decades, accelerating and amplifying global warming, scientists warn.

Those heat-trapping gases under the frozen Arctic ground may be a bigger factor in global warming than the cutting down of forests, and a scenario that climate scientists hadn't quite accounted for, according to a group of permafrost experts. The gases won't contribute as much as pollution from power plants, cars, trucks and planes, though.

The permafrost scientists predict that over the next three decades a total of about 45 billion metric tons of carbon from methane and carbon dioxide will seep into the atmosphere when permafrost thaws during summers. That's about the same amount of heat-trapping gas the world spews during five years of burning coal, gas and other fossil fuels

And the picture is even more alarming for the end of the century. The scientists calculate that about than 300 billion metric tons of carbon will belch from the thawing Earth from now until 2100.

Adding in that gas means that warming would happen "20 to 30 percent faster than from fossil fuel emissions alone," said Edward Schuur of the University of Florida. "You are significantly speeding things up by releasing this carbon."

Usually the first few to several inches of permafrost thaw in the summer, but scientists are now looking at up to 10 feet of soft unfrozen ground because of warmer temperatures, he said. The gases come from decaying plants that have been stuck below frozen ground for millennia.

Schuur and 40 other scientists in the Permafrost Carbon Research Network met this summer and jointly wrote up their findings, which were published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

"The survey provides an important warning that global climate warming is likely to be worse than expected," said Jay Zwally, a NASA polar scientist who wasn't part of the study. "Arctic permafrost has been like a wild card."

When the Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists issued its last full report in 2007, it didn't even factor in trapped methane and carbon dioxide from beneath the permafrost. Diplomats are meeting this week in South Africa to find ways of curbing human-made climate change.

Schuur and others said increasing amounts of greenhouse gas are seeping out of permafrost each year. Some is methane, which is 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide in trapping heat.

In a recent video, University of Alaska Fairbanks professor Katey Walter Anthony, a study co-author, is shown setting leaking methane gas on fire with flames shooting far above her head.

"Places like that are all around," Anthony said in a phone interview. "We're tapping into old carbon that has been locked up in the ground for 30,000 to 40,000 years."

That triggers what Anthony and other scientists call a feedback cycle. The world warms, mostly because of human-made greenhouse gases. That thaws permafrost, releasing more natural greenhouse gas, augmenting the warming.

There are lots of unknowns and a large margin of error because this is a relatively new issue with limited data available, the scientists acknowledge.

"It's very much a seat-of-the-pants expert assessment," said Stanford University's Chris Field, who wasn't involved in the new report.

The World Meteorological Organization this week said the worst of the warming in 2011 was in the northern areas — where there is permafrost — and especially Russia. Since 1970, the Arctic has warmed at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the globe.

The thawing permafrost also causes trees to lean — scientists call them "drunken trees" — and roads to buckle. Study co-author F. Stuart Chapin III said when he first moved to Fairbanks the road from his house to the University of Alaska had to be resurfaced once a decade.

"Now it gets resurfaced every year due to thawing permafrost," Chapin said.

More on Coke’s Role in a Shelved Bottle Ban

2011-12-05T13:04:00.001-08:00

Green
December 1, 2011

By FELICITY BARRINGER

Jon Jarvis, the director of the National Park Service, has said that its decision to scuttle a planned ban on small plastic water bottles at Grand Canyon National Park had nothing to do with opposition from the Coca-Cola Company.

Associated Press

But a November 2010 e-mail released on Thursday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request tells a different story.

Mr. Jarvis cited only one concern, Coca-Cola's contributions to the National Park Foundation, in discussing the ban with a regional manager of the Park Service. "While I applaud the intent" of the ban, he wrote in the e-mail, "there are going to be consequences, since Coke is a major sponsor of our recycling efforts."

"Let's talk about this" before the park "pulls the plug," he added.

Last month Mr. Jarvis said in a statement that "my decision to hold off the ban was not influenced by Coke but rather the service-wide implications to our concessions contracts, and frankly the concern for public safety in a desert park."

Coca-Cola has donated more than $13 million to parks around the country, much of it through the National Park Foundation, with which it is working on a recycling program at the National Mall.

Neil Mulholland, president of the Park Foundation, had told Mr. Jarvis of Coca-Cola's objections to the ban, saying in a November e-mail that the company had strongly negative reactions. The e-mails were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a Washington-based environmental organization that first called attention to the issue.

The latest documents also raise the possibility that Mr. Jarvis was ready to prevent the bottle ban from going forward at parks besides Utah's Zion National Park, which pioneered the idea of such a ban three years ago and won a park service award for doing so.

An e-mail in six months ago from Jo Pendry, who was serving as the national parks headquarters official responsible for park concessions, said that an aide to Mr. Jarvis told her that "the director's view is NOT to ban the sale of bottled water but to go the choice route."

It was not immediately clear if "the choice route" meant that individual parks could opt for a ban or that parks would be instructed to give visitors a choice between bottled water and reusable water bottles that could be refilled at filling stations provided by concessionaires.

David Barna, a spokesman for the park service, said that Mr. Jarvis has not made a decision on a national bottled water policy. "The national concessions office has been working on an option package and Director Jarvis has it for review," he said. "We do not know when a decision will be made."

"N.P.S. met with the industry last January and the shareholders/concessioners in the spring," he wrote in an e-mail in response to questions. "We have 630 concessioners in the 397 parks."

He added that Mr. Jarvis might seek more information or reach a decision. "It does not necessarily mean a one size fits all for all parks," he said. "It may be a series of options that allow for transition periods so the public knows what to expect."

A draft policy document obtained in response to the Freedom of Information Act cautions park managers to "consider other factors prior to making a decision to reduce of eliminate the sale of water or other beverages in disposable plastic containers."

"Some visitors have come to rely on the availability of refrigerated bottled water for sale in our parks," it said.

Carbon Emissions Show Biggest Jump Ever Recorded

2011-12-05T12:51:00.001-08:00

New York Times
December 4, 2011

By JUSTIN GILLIS

Emissions rose 5.9 percent in 2010, according to an analysis released Sunday by the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists tracking the numbers. Scientists with the group said the increase, a half-billion extra tons of carbon pumped into the air, was almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution, and the largest percentage increase since 2003.

The increase solidified a trend of ever-rising emissions that scientists fear will make it difficult, if not impossible, to forestall severe climate change in coming decades.

The researchers said the high growth rate reflected a bounce-back from the 1.4 percent drop in emissions in 2009, the year the recession had its biggest impact.

They do not expect the extraordinary growth to persist, but do expect emissions to return to something closer to the 3 percent yearly growth of the last decade, still a worrisome figure that signifies little progress in limiting greenhouse gases. The growth rate in the 1990s was closer to 1 percent yearly.

The combustion of coal represented more than half of the growth in emissions, the report found.

In the United States, emissions dropped by a remarkable 7 percent in the recession year of 2009, but rose by just over 4 percent last year, the new analysis shows. This country is the world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, pumping 1.5 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere last year.

The United States was surpassed several years ago by China, where emissions grew 10.4 percent in 2010, with that country injecting 2.2 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide emissions are usually measured by the weight of carbon they contain.

The new figures come as delegates from 191 countries meet in Durban, South Africa, for yet another negotiating session in a global control effort that has been going on, with minimal success, for the better part of two decades.

"Each year that emissions go up, there's another year of negotiations, another year of indecision," said Glen P. Peters, a researcher at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo and a leader of the group that produced the new analysis. "There's no evidence that this trajectory we've been following the last 10 years is going to change."

Scientists say the rapid growth of emissions is warming the Earth, threatening the ecology and putting human welfare at long-term risk. But their increasingly urgent pleas that society find a way to limit emissions have met sharp political resistance in many countries, including the United States, because doing so would entail higher energy costs.

The new figures show a continuation of a trend in which developing countries, including China and India, have surpassed the wealthy countries in their overall greenhouse emissions. In 2010, the combustion of fossil fuels and the production of cement sent more than nine billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere, the new analysis found, with 57 percent of that coming from developing countries.

Emissions per person, though, are still sharply higher in the wealthy countries, and those countries have been emitting greenhouse gases far longer, so they account for the bulk of the excess gases in the atmosphere. The level of carbon dioxide, the main such gas, has increased 40 percent since the Industrial Revolution.

On the surface, the figures of recent years suggest that wealthy countries have made headway in stabilizing their emissions. But Dr. Peters pointed out that in a sense, the rich countries have simply exported some of them.

The fast rise in developing countries has been caused to a large extent by the growth of energy-intensive manufacturing industries that make goods that rich countries import. "All that has changed is the location in which the emissions are being produced," Dr. Peters said.

Many countries, as part of their response to the economic crisis, invested billions in programs designed to make their energy systems greener. While it is possible those will pay long-term dividends, the new numbers suggest they have had little effect so far.

The financial crisis "was an opportunity to move the global economy away from a high-emissions trajectory," said a scientific paper about the new figures, released online on Sunday by the journal Nature Climate Change. "Our results provide no indication of this happening."

Canada to withdraw from Kyoto Protocol

2011-11-28T14:08:00.001-08:00

BBC News
November 28, 2011

Canada will not make further cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, and may begin formally withdrawing next month.

Though not a surprise, the news will anger poor countries that say the rich are reneging on pledges made 14 years ago when the protocol was signed.

They see the protocol as the only way to make emission cuts legally binding.

Also on the first day of the UN climate summit in South Africa, the UK was criticised over support for tar sands.

In the main conference hall, delegates heard South African President Jacob Zuma call for meaningful progress.

"For most people in the developing world and Africa, climate change is a matter of life and death," he said.

"In these talks, states, parties will need to look beyond their national interests to find a global solution for the common good and benefit of all humanity."

Different worlds

The consequence for some of the islands will be extinction"

Selwyn Hart Aosis

The very differing interpretations of "national interests" did not take long to surface.

Canada declared four years ago that it did not intend to meet its existing Kyoto Protocol commitment - to bring annual emissions in the period 2008-12 down by 6% from their 1990 level.

They have in fact risen by about one-third since 1990.

And just a few hours after talks began in the Durban conference hall, Canadian environment minister Peter Kent was confirming to reporters in the capital Ottawa that its involvement with Kyoto was over.

"We will not make a second commitment to Kyoto," he said. "We don't need a binding convention."

Tar sands exploitation comes at a heavy environmental cost, locally as well as globally

Since the election of Stephen Harper's Conservative government in 2006, Canada has sought to align its stance with its most important trading partner, the US.

It fears that its economy would suffer if it took on stronger curbs than its southern neighbour.

Canadian network CTV reported that the government would begin formally withdrawing from the protocol next month.

Mr Kent declined to comment.

But with 12 months notice needed to withdraw, and the current set of targets expiring at the end of next year, the timescale for a formal secession would make sense and would then put Canada in the same bracket formally as the US, which withdrew under President George W Bush.

Russia and Japan have also said they will not make further emission cuts under the protocol, though it is not known whether they plan formally to withdraw.

In Durban, the US deputy climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing said he did not see existing pledges on curbing emissions by 2020 changing.

DURBAN CLIMATE CONFERENCE

Summit will attempt to agree the roadmap for a future global deal on reducing carbon emissions
Developing countries are insisting rich nations pledge further emission cuts under the Kyoto Protocol
Delegates also aim to finalise some deals struck at last year's summit
These include speeding up the roll-out of clean technology to developing nations…
… and a system for managing the Green Climate Fund, scheduled to gather and distribute billions of dollars per year to developing countries
Progress may also be made on funding forest protection

"The idea that countries would change their current pledges that they listed in the Cancun agreements [from last year's summit in Mexico] seems unlikely to me," he told reporters.

"I don't see the major economies shifting those actions."

At a meeting of the Major Economies Forum (MEF) earlier this month - the body that brings together 17 of the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitters - India and Brazil joined the US in wanting to delay beginning talks on a new global climate agreement until at least 2015.

The EU and many smaller developing states want to reach agreement in Durban on starting talks pretty much immediately, reaching agreement by 2015 and cutting emissions by 2020.

Reports by numerous organisations, most recently the International Energy Agency, have concluded that in order to meet the goal of keeping global average temperature rise since pre-industrial times below 2C, emissions should peak and begin to fall around 2020, if not earlier.

The current pledges to which Mr Pershing referred will not achieve this.

Fossil fired

Speaking for the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis), Barbadian delegate Selwyn Hart said his group was not prepared to contemplate delay.

"At the heart of any agreement should be the principle that no country is expendable," he said.

"It's morally and ethically indefensible to sign an agreement that will result in the demise of a single nation state. The consequence for some of the islands will be extinction."

The UK, meanwhile, received one of the unwanted "Fossil of the Day" awards from a coalition of campaign groups.

They were angered by reports, deriving from a Freedom of Information (FoI) request by the Co-operative, that the UK has been lobbying to weaken EU rules on oil from Canadian tar sands.

Extracting oil from the tar deposits that spread across Canada's prairie provinces is much more energy-intensive than conventional oil drilling, and also uses huge amounts of water.

Some climate scientists say exploiting the reserves is simply incompatible with curbing global warming.

Follow Richard on Twitter

Beware Climate Change Risk From Aircon, Fridge Gases: U.N.

2011-11-22T08:26:00.001-08:00

World Environment News
November 22, 2011

Date: 22-Nov-11
Country: SINGAPORE
Author: David Fogarty

Refrigerators are displayed for customers at a shop in Seoul October 28, 2011.
Photo: Jo Yong-Hak

Soaring use of man-made gases used in refrigerators, airconditioners and fire extinguishers risks speeding up global warming and industry should adopt alternatives, a U.N. report said on Monday.

In the most dire forecast, unless governments and industry act to limit the growth, the annual emissions of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, by 2050 could equate to pumping nearly 9 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- about a third of mankind's CO2 emissions now.

HFCs have been phased in since the 1990s to replace chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which have damaged the Earth's protective ozone layer and are also very powerful greenhouse gases.

On average, HFCs survive in the atmosphere for 15 years and are about 1,600 times more potent in trapping heat in the air than CO2, underscoring growing alarm about these compounds.

Combined with rapidly growing CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, this will make it even harder for mankind to try to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius -- a threshold that risks dangerous climate change, scientists say.

"In the future, HFC emissions have the potential to become very large. This is primarily due to growing demand in emerging economies and increasing populations," said the report by the U.N. Environment Program released in Bali, Indonesia.

New middle-class consumers in major developing countries such as China, India, Brazil and Indonesia are driving demand for new refrigerators and airconditioners. HFCs are also used to make insulating foams and aerosols.

A global pact called the Montreal Protocol, widely regarded as one of the world's most successful environmental treaties, led nations to phase out CFCs from the late 1980s. Production quickly plunged, cutting the equivalent of billions of tons of CO2 annually.

HFCs do not damage the ozone layer, which shields the planet from cancer-causing ultra-violet radiation.

Global consumption has doubled in a decade to just over 400,000 tons in 2010 and consumption of some HFCs is growing 10 percent a year, threatening to undo the climate benefits of the Montreal Protocol.

"If HFC emissions continue to increase, they are likely to have a noticeable influence on the climate system," said the report, released during a meeting of Montreal Protocol signatories.

There are options, though. These include developing and ramping up production of HFCs that survive only a matter of days in the atmosphere or using different gases altogether to chill food and drinks or keep the car cool on a hot day.

For example, some manufacturers are already using hydrocarbons, CO2 and ammonia for industrial refrigeration and airconditioning plants while fire-fighting systems can use foams, dry chemicals and inert gases. Increasingly, household refrigerators are using hydrocarbons in compressors, the report says.

But more work needs to be done on developing and phasing in new alternatives and working out the long-term benefits to ensure they don't damage the climate or have other side-effects.

Parks Chief Blocked Plan for Grand Canyon Bottle Ban

2011-11-14T08:38:00.001-08:00

New York Times
November 9, 2011

Parks Chief Blocked Plan for Grand Canyon Bottle Ban

Richard Perry/The New York Times

Discarded plastic bottles account for about 30 percent of the Grand Canyon park's waste stream, according to the park service.

By FELICITY BARRINGER

Weary of plastic litter, Grand Canyon National Park officials were in the final stages of imposing a ban on the sale of disposable water bottles in the Grand Canyon late last year when the nation's parks chief abruptly blocked the plan after conversations with Coca-Cola, a major donor to the National Park Foundation.

Chris Rank/Bloomberg News

Coca-Cola distributes water under the Dasani brand.

Stephen P. Martin, the architect of the plan and the top parks official at the Grand Canyon, said his superiors told him two weeks before its Jan. 1 start date that Coca-Cola, which distributes water under the Dasani brand and has donated more than $13 million to the parks, had registered its concerns about the bottle ban through the foundation, and that the project was being tabled. His account was confirmed by park, foundation and company officials.

A spokesman for the National Park Service, David Barna, said it was Jon Jarvis, the top federal parks official, who made the "decision to put it on hold until we can get more information." He added that "reducing and eliminating disposable plastic bottles is one element of our green plan. This is a process, and we are at the beginning of it."

Mr. Martin, a 35-year veteran of the park service who had risen to the No. 2 post in 2003, was disheartened by the outcome. "That was upsetting news because of what I felt were ethical issues surrounding the idea of being influenced unduly by business," Mr. Martin said in an interview. "It was even more of a concern because we had worked with all the people who would be truly affected in their sales and bottom line, and they accepted it."

Neil J. Mulholland, president of the foundation, said that a representative of Coca-Cola had reached out to him late in the process to inquire about the reasons for the water bottle ban and how it would work.

"There was not an overt statement made to me that they objected to the ban," Mr. Mulholland said, adding, "There was never anything inferred by Coke that if this ban happens, we're losing their support." The foundation president noted in the interview that Coca-Cola had recently donated $80,000 for a recycling program on the Mall in Washington.

A spokeswoman for Coca-Cola Refreshments USA, Susan Stribling, said the company would rather help address the plastic litter problem by increasing the availability of recycling programs. "Banning anything is never the right answer," she said. "If you do that, you don't necessarily address the problem." She also characterized the bottle ban as limiting personal choice. "You're not allowing people to decide what they want to eat and drink and consume," she said.

In seeking the ban, the Grand Canyon park, under Mr. Martin's direction from 2006 until his retirement last December, was following the example of Zion National Park, in Utah, which had instituted a similar program to great acclaim in 2008. The park service gave it an environmental achievement award in 2009 for eliminating 60,000 plastic bottles from the park in its first year.

Discarded plastic bottles account for about 30 percent of the park's total waste stream, according to the park service. Mr. Martin said the bottles are "the single biggest source of trash" found inside the canyon.

Mr. Martin said he got approval to proceed with implementing the ban after he briefed his superiors in both the Denver regional office and Washington headquarters in the spring of 2010. Research showed that the park sold about $400,000 worth of bottled water in a given year. The planned ban at the Grand Canyon would have covered only smaller bottles and would not have applied to other beverages such as soda or juices.

In preparation, the park and its contracted concessionaires installed more water "filling stations" for reusable bottles at a cost of about $300,000, according to information provided by the park service to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an environmental group based in Washington that has worked to uncover the underlying reasons for the abrupt turn-around on the ban.

Senior park officials considered having Mr. Jarvis announce the ban to a meeting of the Society of Environmental Journalists in the fall of 2010. "From a media standpoint, we see this as good news, it fits perfectly into Jon's sustainability goals," Mr. Barna wrote in an internal park service e-mail. He concluded, "We are aware that others (Nestle, etc.) may not be thrilled at this decision but other than that, are there any downsides?"

In mid-December, Mr. Martin received a telephone call and an e-mail from his immediate boss, John Wessels, the Intermountain regional director for the park service, with news that the ban was being postponed indefinitely.

Mr. Jarvis said that he had not heard of the ban until Nov. 17, and felt that an action by Grand Canyon park would have more impact than Zion's. He added: "My decision to hold off the ban was not influenced by Coke, but rather the service-wide implications to our concessions contracts, and frankly the concern for public safety in a desert park."

The decision was laid out in an e-mail by Jo A. Pendry, then chief of commercial services for the park service, who explained that during a Dec. 13 meeting, Mr. Jarvis "reiterated his decision to have the Grand Canyon hold off on implementation" until "we have hosted a meeting with the major producers of bottled water."

She also wrote that Mr. Jarvis expected that Mr. Wessels would "touch base with the N.P.F./Coke, and he asked that I get in touch with you to see where you are with making that contact."

The N.P.F. refers to the acronym for the nonprofit foundation, which was chartered by Congress to generate individual and corporate private donations to the national parks.

The e-mails were provided to The New York Times by a current park service employee concerned about the handling of the bottle ban. The employee declined to be identified because he does not have permission to speak publicly on the subject.

PEER, the public employees' group, filed a Freedom of Information Act request in August seeking documents that could shed light on the decision, but only two documents — letters between Mr. Martin and representatives of the park concessionaire Xanterra — were released, said Jeff Ruch, the group's president, who is weighing a lawsuit.

Asked why Mr. Mulholland, the president of the foundation, had been involved in the decision to table the ban, Mr. Barna, the park service spokesman, said, "He's a partner, and he represents a lot of people who do good things in the parks. He's a way for people to get introductions within the park service."

Mr. Barna quickly added that he did not mean that donors could buy access.

For his part, Mr. Mulholland said he had no qualms about entertaining Coca-Cola's questions and concerns. "I don't feel conflicted, because the park service does a very good job of policing themselves and adhering to their standards," he said.

Is Junk Food Really Cheaper?

2011-10-04T15:39:00.001-07:00

New York Times
September 24, 2011

By MARK BITTMAN

THE "fact" that junk food is cheaper than real food has become a reflexive part of how we explain why so many Americans are overweight, particularly those with lower incomes. I frequently read confident statements like, "when a bag of chips is cheaper than a head of broccoli ..." or "it's more affordable to feed a family of four at McDonald's than to cook a healthy meal for them at home."

Enlarge This Image

Daniel Borris for The New York Times

This is just plain wrong. In fact it isn't cheaper to eat highly processed food: a typical order for a family of four — for example, two Big Macs, a cheeseburger, six chicken McNuggets, two medium and two small fries, and two medium and two small sodas — costs, at the McDonald's a hundred steps from where I write, about $28. (Judicious ordering of "Happy Meals" can reduce that to about $23 — and you get a few apple slices in addition to the fries!)

In general, despite extensive government subsidies, hyperprocessed food remains more expensive than food cooked at home. You can serve a roasted chicken with vegetables along with a simple salad and milk for about $14, and feed four or even six people. If that's too much money, substitute a meal of rice and canned beans with bacon, green peppers and onions; it's easily enough for four people and costs about $9. (Omitting the bacon, using dried beans, which are also lower in sodium, or substituting carrots for the peppers reduces the price further, of course.)

Another argument runs that junk food is cheaper when measured by the calorie, and that this makes fast food essential for the poor because they need cheap calories. But given that half of the people in this country (and a higher percentage of poor people) consume too many calories rather than too few, measuring food's value by the calorie makes as much sense as measuring a drink's value by its alcohol content. (Why not drink 95 percent neutral grain spirit, the cheapest way to get drunk?)

Besides, that argument, even if we all needed to gain weight, is not always true. A meal of real food cooked at home can easily contain more calories, most of them of the "healthy" variety. (Olive oil accounts for many of the calories in the roast chicken meal, for example.)In comparing prices of real food and junk food, I used supermarket ingredients, not the pricier organic or local food that many people would consider ideal. But food choices are not black and white; the alternative to fast food is not necessarily organic food, any more than the alternative to soda is Bordeaux.

The alternative to soda is water, and the alternative to junk food is not grass-fed beef and greens from a trendy farmers' market, but anything other than junk food: rice, grains, pasta, beans, fresh vegetables, canned vegetables, frozen vegetables, meat, fish, poultry, dairy products, bread, peanut butter, a thousand other things cooked at home — in almost every case a far superior alternative.

"Anything that you do that's not fast food is terrific; cooking once a week is far better than not cooking at all," says Marion Nestle, professor of food studies at New York University and author of "What to Eat." "It's the same argument as exercise: more is better than less and some is a lot better than none."

THE fact is that most people can afford real food. Even the nearly 50 million Americans who are enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as food stamps) receive about $5 per person per day, which is far from ideal but enough to survive. So we have to assume that money alone doesn't guide decisions about what to eat. There are, of course, the so-called food deserts, places where it's hard to find food: the Department of Agriculture says that more than two million Americans in low-income rural areas live 10 miles or more from a supermarket, and more than five million households without access to cars live more than a half mile from a supermarket.

Still, 93 percent of those with limited access to supermarkets do have access to vehicles, though it takes them 20 more minutes to travel to the store than the national average. And after a long day of work at one or even two jobs, 20 extra minutes — plus cooking time — must seem like an eternity.

Taking the long route to putting food on the table may not be easy, but for almost all Americans it remains a choice, and if you can drive to McDonald's you can drive to Safeway. It's cooking that's the real challenge. (The real challenge is not "I'm too busy to cook." In 2010 the average American, regardless of weekly earnings, watched no less than an hour and a half of television per day. The time is there.)

The core problem is that cooking is defined as work, and fast food is both a pleasure and a crutch. "People really are stressed out with all that they have to do, and they don't want to cook," says Julie Guthman, associate professor of community studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of the forthcoming "Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice and the Limits of Capitalism." "Their reaction is, 'Let me enjoy what I want to eat, and stop telling me what to do.' And it's one of the few things that less well-off people have: they don't have to cook."

It's not just about choice, however, and rational arguments go only so far, because money and access and time and skill are not the only considerations. The ubiquity, convenience and habit-forming appeal of hyperprocessed foods have largely drowned out the alternatives: there are five fast-food restaurants for every supermarket in the United States; in recent decades the adjusted for inflation price of fresh produce has increased by 40 percent while the price of soda and processed food has decreased by as much as 30 percent; and nearly inconceivable resources go into encouraging consumption in restaurants: fast-food companies spent $4.2 billion on marketing in 2009.

Furthermore, the engineering behind hyperprocessed food makes it virtually addictive. A 2009 study by the Scripps Research Institute indicates that overconsumption of fast food "triggers addiction-like neuroaddictive responses" in the brain, making it harder to trigger the release of dopamine. In other words the more fast food we eat, the more we need to give us pleasure; thus the report suggests that the same mechanisms underlie drug addiction and obesity.

This addiction to processed food is the result of decades of vision and hard work by the industry. For 50 years, says David A. Kessler, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and author of "The End of Overeating," companies strove to create food that was "energy-dense, highly stimulating, and went down easy. They put it on every street corner and made it mobile, and they made it socially acceptable to eat anytime and anyplace. They created a food carnival, and that's where we live. And if you're used to self-stimulation every 15 minutes, well, you can't run into the kitchen to satisfy that urge."

Real cultural changes are needed to turn this around. Somehow, no-nonsense cooking and eating — roasting a chicken, making a grilled cheese sandwich, scrambling an egg, tossing a salad — must become popular again, and valued not just by hipsters in Brooklyn or locavores in Berkeley. The smart campaign is not to get McDonald's to serve better food but to get people to see cooking as a joy rather than a burden, or at least as part of a normal life.

As with any addictive behavior, this one is most easily countered by educating children about the better way. Children, after all, are born without bad habits. And yet it's adults who must begin to tear down the food carnival.

The question is how? Efforts are everywhere. The People's Grocery in Oakland secures affordable groceries for low-income people. Zoning laws in Los Angeles restrict the number of fast-food restaurants in high-obesity neighborhoods. There's the Healthy Food Financing Initiative, a successful Pennsylvania program to build fresh food outlets in underserved areas, now being expanded nationally. FoodCorps and Cooking Matters teach young people how to farm and cook.

As Malik Yakini, executive director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, says, "We've seen minor successes, but the food movement is still at the infant stage, and we need a massive social shift to convince people to consider healthier options."

HOW do you change a culture? The answers, not surprisingly, are complex. "Once I look at what I'm eating," says Dr. Kessler, "and realize it's not food, and I ask 'what am I doing here?' that's the start. It's not about whether I think it's good for me, it's about changing how I feel. And we change how people feel by changing the environment."

Obviously, in an atmosphere where any regulation is immediately labeled "nanny statism," changing "the environment" is difficult. But we've done this before, with tobacco. The 1998 tobacco settlement limited cigarette marketing and forced manufacturers to finance anti-smoking campaigns — a negotiated change that led to an environmental one that in turn led to a cultural one, after which kids said to their parents, "I wish you didn't smoke." Smoking had to be converted from a cool habit into one practiced by pariahs.

A similar victory in the food world is symbolized by the stories parents tell me of their kids booing as they drive by McDonald's.

To make changes like this more widespread we need action both cultural and political. The cultural lies in celebrating real food; raising our children in homes that don't program them for fast-produced, eaten-on-the-run, high-calorie, low-nutrition junk; giving them the gift of appreciating the pleasures of nourishing one another and enjoying that nourishment together.

Political action would mean agitating to limit the marketing of junk; forcing its makers to pay the true costs of production; recognizing that advertising for fast food is not the exercise of free speech but behavior manipulation of addictive substances; and making certain that real food is affordable and available to everyone. The political challenge is the more difficult one, but it cannot be ignored.

What's easier is to cook at every opportunity, to demonstrate to family and neighbors that the real way is the better way. And even the more fun way: kind of like a carnival.

San Francisco Least Polluting Among Major Urban Areas

2011-09-15T09:53:00.001-07:00

Environment and Urbanization Journal
August 23, 2011

by Jeffrey Spivak

Share Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Urban areas around the world account for an estimated 71 percent of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions (including everything from power plants to automobile driving). But a new study found that big-city metros differ markedly in how much they pollute.

In a study published earlier this year in the journal Environment & Urbanization, researchers at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., found that New York City had less than half the per-capita greenhouse gas emissions of Denver, Colorado, and Los Angeles—considered by some to be the smog capital of the country—had lower per-capita emissions than Minneapolis, Minnesota. Outside the United States, some of the largest urbanized centers, such as Tokyo, Paris, and even Seoul, had some of the lowest per-capita greenhouse gas emission rates in the world.

Why? The researchers discovered some important trends: Lower per-capita emissions typically were found in dense urban areas with good transportation systems and in warmer climates. That helps explain why sunny L.A. performed better than chilly Minneapolis. Digging even deeper into their data, the researchers determined that dense, more urban sections of Toronto had lower emissions than single-family-housing-oriented suburbs.

In the future, as greenhouse gas reduction policies gain momentum at the federal and metropolitan levels, this new study could have implications for real estate development among ULI members. First, the larger, denser, and warmer metro areas may actually accommodate more new development, because of per-capita emissions levels that are lower than the U.S. average. Second, more sprawling metropolitan areas may eventually incentivize denser new developments as a way to curb the growth of greenhouse gas emissions.

Below are the top ten lowest-polluting big-city metro areas in the United States, according to the World Bank researchers:

Rank	Major Metro	Carbon Emissions (Tons per Capita)
1	San Francisco	10.1
2	New York City	10.5
3	Philadelphia	11.1
4	San Diego	11.4
5	Miami	11.9
6	Chicago	12.0
7	Portland, Oregon	12.4
8	Los Angeles	13.0
9	Boston	13.3
10	Seattle	13.7

Source: Environment & Urbanization journal.

James Hansen slams Keystone XL Canada-U.S. Pipeline: “Exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts”

2011-08-17T12:12:00.001-07:00

Climate Progress
June 5, 2011

By Joe Romm on Jun 5, 2011 at 8:03 pm

X-axis is the range of potential resource in billions of barrels. Y-axis is grams of Carbon per MegaJoule of final fuel.

The Canadian tar sands are substantially dirtier than conventional oil as the chart above shows (longer analysis here). They may contain enough carbon-intensive fuel to make stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide at non-catastrophic levels all but impossible.

And that is the point of Dr. James Hansen in a must-read essay on the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline to bring that dirty fuel into this country, "Silence Is Deadly: I'm Speaking Out Against Canada-U.S. Tar Sands Pipeline."

Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has been right longer about the climate than just about anyone else (see "Right for 27 years: 1981 Hansen study finds warming trend that could raise sea levels"). So he deserves to be heard.

Here is his essay, to which I've added some commentary with links:

The U.S. Department of State seems likely to approve a huge pipeline, known as Keystone XL to carry tar sands oil (about 830,000 barrels per day) to Texas refineries unless sufficient objections are raised. The scientific community needs to get involved in this fray now. If this project gains approval, it will become exceedingly difficult to control the tar sands monster. The environmental impacts of tar sands development include: irreversible effects on biodiversity and the natural environment, reduced water quality, destruction of fragile pristine Boreal Forest and associated wetlands, aquatic and watershed mismanagement, habitat fragmentation, habitat loss, disruption to life cycles of endemic wildlife particularly bird and Caribou migration, fish deformities and negative impacts on the human health in downstream communities. Although there are multiple objections to tar sands development and the pipeline, including destruction of the environment in Canada, and the likelihood of spills along the pipeline's pathway, such objections, by themselves, are very unlikely to stop the project.

For more on the pipeline controversy, see "WikiLeaks reveals State Department discord over U.S. support for Canadian tar sands oil pipeline."

An overwhelming objection is that exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts. The tar sands are estimated (e.g., see IPCC Fourth Assessment Report) to contain at least 400 GtC (equivalent to about 200 ppm CO₂). Easily available reserves of conventional oil and gas are enough to take atmospheric CO₂ well above 400 ppm, which is unsafe for life on earth. However, if emissions from coal are phased out over the next few decades and if unconventional fossil fuels including tar sands are left in the ground, it is conceivable to stabilize earth's climate.

Phase out of emissions from coal is itself an enormous challenge. However, if the tar sands are thrown into the mix, it is essentially game over. There is no practical way to capture the CO₂ emitted while burning oil, which is used principally in vehicles.

Governments are acting as if they are oblivious to the fact that there is a limit on how much fossil fuel carbon we can put into the air. Fossil fuel carbon injected into the atmosphere will stay in surface reservoirs for millennia. We can extract a fraction of the excess CO₂ via improved agricultural and forestry practices, but we cannot get back to a safe CO₂ level if all coal is used without carbon capture or if unconventional fossil fuels, like tar sands are exploited.

A document describing the pipeline project is available here. Comments, due by 6 June, can be submitted here, or by e–mail to keystonexl@cardno.com or mail to Keystone XL EIS Project, P.O. Box 96503–98500, Washington, DC 20090–6503 or fax to 202–269–0098.

I am submitting a comment that the analysis is flawed and insufficient, failing to account for important information regarding human–made climate change that is now available. I note that prior government targets for limiting human–made global warming are now known to be inadequate. Specifically, the target to limit global warming to 2^oC, rather than being a safe "guardrail," is actually a recipe for global climate disasters. I will include drafts of the following papers that I recently co–authored:

Paleoclimate Implications for Human–Made Climate Change that can be found here,
Earth's Energy Imbalance that can be found here, and
The Case for Young People and Nature that can be found here.

My general audience discussion of Hansen's first paper is "Must-read Hansen and Sato paper: We are at a climate tipping point that, once crossed, enables multi-meter sea level rise this century."

I will also comment that the tar sands pipeline project does not serve the national interest, because it will result in large adverse impacts, on the public and wildlife, by contributing substantially to climate change. These impacts must be evaluated before the project is considered further.

It is my impression and understanding that a large number of objections could have an effect and help achieve a more careful evaluation, possibly averting a huge mistake.

Hear! Hear!

I'm just sorry he didn't post earlier, to inspire more people to submit by the Monday deadline.

It is worth noting that the existing part of the pipeline system doesn't even seem like a good idea for non-climatic environmental reasons, as the Christian science Monitor reported Saturday:

A controversial oil-sands pipeline operated by a Canadian oil company was ordered shut down Friday by the US Department of Transportation on charges that its continued operation "would be hazardous to lives, property, and the environment."

TransCanada, a leading North American pipeline operator, started operation of Keystone I, a 36-inch pipeline system, in June 2010, making it possible to deliver Canadian oil to markets across Midwest farmland in several states, from the Dakotas through Illinois.

The company wants to expand the system so that it snakes from the Canadian province of Alberta, taking oil southeast through Oklahoma and eventually into refineries located in Nederland, Tex., along the Gulf Coast.

The Catholic bishop whose diocese extends over the tar sands posted a scathing pastoral letter in 2009 – see Canadian bishop challenges the "moral legitimacy" of tar sands production.

It's times like these that I remember how much I miss my friend and colleague Alex Farrell, the passionate analyst. He did the best analysis of the climate risks of unconventional oil I know of, "Risks of the oil transition" and is the source of the outstanding figure at the top. He would no doubt be standing side to side with Hansen on this.

Everyone who cares about preserving a livable climate for future generations should join Hansen in opposing tar sands development and this pipeline.

Governor signs electric-vehicle bill

2011-08-05T12:51:00.001-07:00

The Press Enterprise
August 5, 2011

PE Politics

on August 4, 2011 10:40 AM
Share:

Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation by Assemblyman Kevin Jeffries that will let Riverside County or any of its cities decide to allow neighborhood electric vehicles.

Current state law bans the vehicles from driving on roads where the speed limit is 35 mph or more.

Jeffries' bill is the latest to carve out an exception for the vehicles in a specific area. The measure, however, is significantly larger in scope than previous bills and could open wide swaths of the county to the vehicles.

Supporters say the vehicles let people get around without producing the emissions blamed for global warming.

Local jurisdictions that want to allow the vehicles first must complete plans to ensure the safety of the vehicles' drivers and other vehicles. There have to be separate lanes for the vehicles on streets where the speed limit is more than 35 mph.

Jeffries' bill has a 2017 sunset.

Study: Bioplastics may harm environment

2011-08-05T12:49:00.001-07:00

California Watch
August 5, 2011

D'Arcy Norman/FlickrResearch from North Carolina State University shows biodegradable plastics can release methane while decomposing.

Bad news about "environmentally friendly" biodegradable plastics: They may not be so environmentally friendly after all.

According to research from North Carolina State University, biodegradable plastics can release large amounts of methane while decomposing. And methane is a potent greenhouse gas.

The study was funded by Procter & Gamble, a major manufacturer of plastic products.

"Everybody assumes that biodegradable is desirable. This study calls that into question," Morton Barlaz, one of the researchers who conducted the study, told the McClatchy-Tribune News Service.

Biodegradable plastics, or green plastics, are made from plant derivatives and take a just a few years to decompose.

Traditional plastics, made from petroleum byproducts, can take decades, centuries, even millennia to disappear.

Barlaz and his team say it's this difference in rate of decomposition that is part of the issue.

Here's why: Federal Trade Commission guidelines require that any product marked as compostable or biodegradable must decompose within "a reasonable short period of time" after disposal.

But other federal regulations don't require landfills with gas collection systems to collect methane gas until two years after the waste is buried. That means a quick-decomposing plastic in a landfill is going to release all of its methane into the atmosphere before it can be collected.

Therefore, a slower rate of decomposition may be better for the environment.

"If we want to maximize the environmental benefit of biodegradable products in landfills," Barlaz told ScienceDaily, a science news service, "we need to both expand methane collection at landfills and design these products to degrade more slowly."

James Levis, the primary author of the study, is adamant that traditional plastics are not better than biodegradable plastics in terms of their environmental impact.

He says the take-home message is that landfills need to do a better job collecting gas from decomposing garbage.

"One would need to study the entire life cycle of the material to know if it was better or worse than the alternatives," Levis said. "One should also look at other environmental factors … before making a final judgment."

The research appeared in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

California has record year for rooftop solar

2011-07-07T08:57:00.001-07:00

Mercury News
July 5, 2011

By Dana Hu

New data shows that 2010 was a record year for California's efforts to encourage homeowners and businesses to install rooftop solar panels.

Californians installed 194 megawatts of new solar electric generating equipment in 2010 -- a 47 percent increase over 2009, according to a report released Tuesday about the California Solar Initiative.

One megawatt is enough to power 750 to 1,000 homes. But since the sun doesn't shine all the time, solar industry experts say that one megawatt of solar can power about 200 households.

In January 2007, California launched an unprecedented $3.3 billion effort to install 3,000 megawatts of new solar over the next decade and transform the market for solar energy by reducing the cost of solar-generating equipment.

The California Public Utilities Commission's role in the effort is known as the California Solar Initiative, which provides rebates for residential and commercial customers of the state's three large, investor-owned utilities: Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric.

The California Solar Initiative's road map calls for 1,750 new megawatts of solar power to be installed on residential and commercial roofs in the state by 2016.

Through the end of the first quarter of 2011, California had an estimated 924 megawatts of rooftop solar installed at nearly 95,000 sites -- putting it more than halfway toward meeting the solar initiative's goal.PG&E alone has 47,283 solar customers within its vast Northern California territory.

The aim of the incentives is to help solar achieve what's known in the renewable energy industry as "grid parity" -- the much-awaited point where solar can compete with cheaper sources of electricity such as coal. Data collected by the California Solar Initiative shows that the cost of solar photovoltaic equipment is coming down. For residential systems smaller than 10 kilowatts, inflation-adjusted prices have declined from $10.45 per watt to $8.55 per watt since the start of the program, a reduction of 18 percent.

"You have a market that is fueled with different options for homeowners," said Melicia Charles, supervisor of the solar initiative. "You can own your solar system outright, you can lease it, you can make an arrangement with a third party."

Japan groups alarmed by radioactive soil

2011-07-06T10:42:00.001-07:00

AFP
July 6, 2011

Soil radiation in a city 60 kilometres (40 miles) from Japan's stricken nuclear plant is above levels that prompted resettlement after the Chernobyl disaster, citizens' groups said Tuesday.

The survey of four locations in Fukushima city, outside the nuclear evacuation zone, showed that all soil samples contained caesium exceeding Japan's legal limit of 10,000 becquerels per kilogram (4,500 per pound), they said.

The highest level was 46,540 becquerels per kilogram, and the three other readings were between 16,290 and 19,220 becquerels per kilogram, they said.

The citizens' groups -- the Fukushima Network for Saving Children from Radiation and five other non-governmental organisations -- have called for the evacuation of pregnant women and children from the town.

The highest reading in the city of 290,000 people far exceeded the level that triggered compulsory resettlement ordered by Soviet authorities following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, they said.

Kobe University radiation expert professor Tomoya Yamauchi conducted the survey on June 26 following a request from the groups.

"Soil contamination is spreading in the city," Yamauchi said in a statement. "Children are playing with the soil, meaning they are playing with high levels of radioactive substances. Evacuation must be conducted as soon as possible."

The coastal Fukushima Daiichi plant has been spewing radiation since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out its cooling systems.

Debris from Japanese tsunami steadily drifting toward California

2011-07-05T15:11:00.001-07:00

Mercury News
July 5, 2011

By Paul Rogers

progers@mercurynews.com

Posted: 07/04/2011 07:20:00 PM PDT

Updated: 07/05/2011 05:02:13 AM PDT

Click here to see animated version

Millions of tons of debris that washed into the ocean during Japan's catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in March -- everything from furniture to roofs to pieces of cars -- are now moving steadily toward the United States and raising concerns about a potential environmental headache.

Scientists using computer models say the wreckage, which is scattered across hundreds of miles of the Pacific Ocean, is expected to reach Midway and the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands by next spring and beaches in California, Oregon and Washington in 2013 or early 2014.

"Can you imagine San Francisco put through a shredder? A big grinder?" said Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a Seattle oceanographer who has studied marine debris for more than 20 years.

"The area north of Tokyo was basically shredded. We are going to see boats, parts of homes, lots of plastic bottles, chair cushions, kids' toys, everything."

The debris is moving east at roughly 10 miles a day, and is spread over an area about 350 miles wide and 1,300 miles long -- an area roughly the size of California -- Ebbesmeyer estimates, with the leading edge approaching the international date line.

While lots of the material will break up and sink, some will not, he said.

"I've seen pieces of wood float for 20 or 30 years," he said. "I have Jeep tires with wheels that floated for 30 years. Things float a lot longer than you think."

Complicating the issue, nobody knows for sure the exact area where the debris is spread or its density. And nobody knows what is still floating, what has sunk, or what may be lurking just below the surface. That's because estimates are based on computer models of currents and winds, rather than actual observations from scientists in boats and planes. After ships with the Navy's 7th Fleet reported and photographed the debris, researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Hawaii tracked the refuse with satellites for a month after the March 11 quake and tsunami.

Computer modeling

But by April 14, as it spread over a wider area, it could no longer be detected with the resolution of the satellites that NOAA uses.

"Right after the earthquake we saw huge amounts of wood and fishing gear and households in the water," said Kris McElwee, Pacific islands coordinator for NOAA's marine debris program in Honolulu. "And then we saw for a few weeks these kind of stringers of wood patches. But they are dispersed enough now that you can't see them on satellite images. So we don't know what has sunk and what's still floating out there."

McElwee noted that after other major disasters, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, massive amounts of material that washed out to sea did not turn up on beaches in other countries. Instead, the flotsam caused problems near the beaches where it originated, creating hazards for ships and disrupting commercial fishing.

Still, the currents in every part of the ocean are different, and federal officials are watching the Japanese debris with concern.

Last Monday, representatives from the Coast Guard, NOAA, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. State Department and other agencies met for the first time in Honolulu to share information about the Japanese debris and begin to chart a strategy.

Among their plans: to notify the U.S. Navy and commercial shipping companies that regularly sail across the Pacific so they can begin to document what is floating. That could lead to expeditions to go map and study it.

Prevent, clean up

But the Pacific Ocean is vast. The area between Japan and Hawaii is roughly 3,800 miles of open ocean -- twice the distance from San Francisco to Chicago. Even more daunting, NOAA scientists have calculated that to survey 1 million square kilometers -- roughly 1 percent of the North Pacific Ocean -- would take 68 ships sailing 10 hours a day for one year.

"If this was an oil spill that was moving toward the coast, there would be a lot more attention," said Jared Blumenfeld, the EPA's regional administrator for California, Hawaii, the Pacific islands, Nevada and Arizona.

"We want to educate people on what is happening," he said. "We need to be prepared and work out what we can do to prevent it from coming ashore and then clean up as much as we can when it does come ashore."

McElwee said it is highly unlikely that the debris is radioactive because the tsunami swept it out to sea before the Fukushima nuclear plant melted down. Dead bodies in the refuse would decompose and sink, Ebbesmeyer said, but there is a possibility of some macabre discoveries, like feet in tennis shoes, which have washed up before on Northwest beaches and have been linked with DNA tests to missing persons who drowned.

In some cases, large objects floating near beaches or harbors could be fished out of the water. NOAA removes tons of fishing gear every year from coral reefs off the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, for example. But most experts say the ocean is so vast that the best that can be done is to wait and watch, and clean up beaches if and when it hits California and other states.

University of Hawaii computer models show that after 2014, the debris will end up in the "North Pacific Garbage Patch," a vast area roughly 1,000 miles west of California where plastic debris accumulates and breaks into tiny pieces over time.

"We've got a marine debris problem," McElwee said. "This is a great opportunity to focus on it. But it is an ongoing problem. Whatever percent has been added by this tragedy, we need to all work together to solve it."

Contact Paul Rogers at 408-920-5045.

David's EnviroNews Picks

Farmville in San Francisco

THE VALUE OF FARMING

NO NEW LAND

Mumbai, Miami on list for big weather disasters

After failing to reach goals, California attempts to jump-start its 'Hydrogen Highway'

“Save The Plastic Bag Coalition” Fights Against Banning Plastic Bags in SF

Controversial strawberry pesticide pulled from US

Why the Most Environmental Building is the Building We've Already Built

Leak Offers Glimpse of Campaign Against Climate Science

New York Times

By JUSTIN GILLIS and LESLIE KAUFMAN

A version of this article appeared in print on February 16, 2012, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: In Documents, a Plan to Discredit Climate Teaching.

Get Free E-mail Alerts on These Topics

What's Popular Now

Renato Dulbecco, 97, Dies; Won Prize for Cancer Study

Activist Says He Lied to Obtain Climate Papers

Observatory

Changes in Weather Add to Birds' Marital Woes

Beatlemania for tots

Roundup in city-dwellers' urine

Environmentalists were the 99%

Expert: Wastewater well in Ohio triggered quakes

CEQA covers impact of projects on environment, not impact of environment on projects

Court Rejects the Need for CEQA Analysis of Sea Level Rise and Invalidates CEQA Guideline

Thawing permafrost vents gases to worsen warming

More on Coke’s Role in a Shelved Bottle Ban

Carbon Emissions Show Biggest Jump Ever Recorded

Canada to withdraw from Kyoto Protocol

DURBAN CLIMATE CONFERENCE

More on This Story

Related Stories

Related Internet links

Beware Climate Change Risk From Aircon, Fridge Gases: U.N.

Parks Chief Blocked Plan for Grand Canyon Bottle Ban

Parks Chief Blocked Plan for Grand Canyon Bottle Ban

By FELICITY BARRINGER

Chris Rank/Bloomberg News

Is Junk Food Really Cheaper?

Daniel Borris for The New York Times

San Francisco Least Polluting Among Major Urban Areas

James Hansen slams Keystone XL Canada-U.S. Pipeline: “Exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts”

Governor signs electric-vehicle bill

Study: Bioplastics may harm environment

California has record year for rooftop solar

Japan groups alarmed by radioactive soil

Debris from Japanese tsunami steadily drifting toward California