Category Archives: CO2

Posted on by

Has Keystone XL Fight Rebooted the Environmental Movement?

The Keystone XL pipeline is a very real threat to the environment. If burned, the Canadian tar sand oil the pipeline is meant to carry will pump tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, increasing the devastation of climate change. Pipeline leaks of dilbit (diluted bitumen) could contaminate the vast and vital Ogallala aquifer. (Read the recent Pulitzer Prize-winning series on a dilbit leak in Michigan to get a sense of what’s at stake.)

Dilbit pipeline leak in Arkansas forces evacuation, March 2013 (Photo credit: EPA)

The fight against Keystone XL also has a symbolic component, Bryan Farrell argues over at Slate.

The greatest environmental threat of our era, global climate change, has lacked the kind of focus and specificity that allows organizers to, well, organize. The problems are so varied. Rising ocean levels, forest fires, flooding, the death of coral reefs from acidification. Paradoxically, climate change is hard to fight in part because the threat is so large and multifaceted. Overwhelmed, many people simply throw up their hands and give up.

That, says Farrell (editor at the excellent site Waging Nonviolence), is where the movement against the Keystone XL comes in.

[The anti-Keystone movement] was never about just a pipeline. [Bill] McKibben and a handful of others had another, less talked about goal—to remake the environmental movement into something far more active, creative, and formidable for years to come. The gap that once existed between mainstream environmental groups and grass-roots activists has now largely dissolved, resulting in widespread action that has not been seen in the United States for decades—perhaps even since the first Earth Day in April 1970.On that day, mainstream environmental groups with roots going back to the conservation movement of the early 20th century united with grass-roots activists for a day of teach-ins, influenced by the burgeoning student anti-war movement. Amid the thousands of demonstrations that took place across the nation, there was at least one major act of civil disobedience, in which 15 people were arrested for holding a mock funeral inside Boston’s Logan Airport. Interestingly enough, it was a sort of proto-climate protest against a supersonic plane and its accompanying release of water vapor—a major greenhouse gas.

via Bill McKibben’s fight against Keystone XL: The movement against the pipeline was always an attempt to bridge the divide between mainstream environmental groups and grass-roots activists. - Slate Magazine.

Posted on by

Video: Fracking on “collision course” with National Parks

As Ronald Reagan so famously put it: “There you go again.”

When he uttered that phrase, Reagan was attacking Jimmy Carter. Today, the observation applies equally to another historical dust-up, between Theodore Roosevelt’s old nemesis — Big Oil and Gas — and the home of TR’s legacy: Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP).

As TR’s great-great-grandson, Winthrop Roosevelt, says in a new video, “Unchecked development [of fracking] is on a collision course with one of America’s truly special places” — the grassland park in North Dakota that bears the name of the America’s greatest environmental president.

A Boom With No Boundaries, produced by the Center for American Progress, shows how a slew of new fracking wells — with many more planned — threatens the integrity of TRNP. The 110-square mile park is home to bison, pronghorn antelope, elk, prairie dogs and other distinctive and rare flora and fauna of the American Badlands.

Roosevelt’s “Ethical Movement” Against Big Oil

There is obvious irony in that the threatened park is named for the nation’s “Wilderness Warrior” (the title of Douglas Brinkley’s compelling TR biography). There’s an added layer of irony. One of TR’s biggest and longest-standing enemies was the Standard Oil Company. When Roosevelt became president in 1901, Standard Oil was Big Oil.

Punch Magazine, 1906.

Even before that, in his last formal address to the New York legislature as that state’s governor, Roosevelt warned that without government regulation and oversight, industrial giants would destroy the environment.

“Unrestrained greed,” Roosevelt said, “means the ruin of the great woods and the drying up of the sources of the rivers.”

TR was at least as concerned about the broader, anti-democratic tendencies of concentrations of great wealth and power. To prevent such abuses, President Roosevelt helped create the Bureau of Corporations, a federal body with unprecedented (but still limited) power to investigate and regulate giant corporations like Standard Oil.

The fight, said Roosevelt, was “fundamentally an ethical movement” targeting “the most dangerous members of the criminal class — the criminals of great wealth.”

Roosevelt had his attorney general sue several companies under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act for price-fixing and other illegal practices. Standard Oil of New Jersey, the umbrella organization for dozens of interconnected companies, was one of Roosevelt’s primary targets.

The foes duked it out in court for years. Although he was no longer president, Roosevelt was vindicated in 1911 when the Supreme Court ordered Standard Oil of New Jersey to spin off some 33 separate companies.

The More Things Change…

…the more they remain the same. Today, Standard Oil’s direct descendent, ExxonMobil, is the world’s largest publicly-held company. The corporation has used its wealth to manipulate public opinion about climate change, and directs millions to political campaigns to support friends and defeat foes.

The “unrestrained greed” that TR warned about a century ago continues to destroy land, both public and private.

On March 30, an ExxonMobil pipeline carrying a particularly corrosive form of tarsand oil called dilbit, ruptured, spilling 80,000 gallons of oil in a Little Rock, Arkansas suburb.

That same week, the media reported on a new study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, linking sand used in fracking to lung disease in workers.

In a press release accompanying the new CAP video, Andrew Satter and Jessica Goad call on the Obama administration to follow Theodore Roosevelt’s example.

The story of the assault on Theodore Roosevelt National Park is only one example of how energy development and land conservation are out of balance on our public lands. Over the past four years, the Obama administration has leased two-and-a-half times more acres of public lands to oil and gas companies than it has permanently protected. It’s time for the administration to put policies that protect and conserve our public lands and national parks for future generations on equal ground with policies that promote more oil and gas drilling.

 

 

Posted on by

Germany’s Power Play: Book Review of Clean Break

There’s a positive review of Clean Break in the current issue of The Washington Spectator (reviewed by Kate Gordon, Vice President and Director of Energy & Climate at Next Generation).

Gordon raises an issue I didn’t directly address in the book: The potential effect if inexpensive natural gas becomes available to Germany through newly discovered deposits in Poland.

“If it’s cheap and plentiful enough,” Gordon warns, “natural gas can undermine the renewable-energy sector just as it’s getting off the ground.”

She raises an interesting issue. And while I don’t have a definitive answer, I do have a couple of first-thoughts about this. German’s renewable-energy industry is well-established and enjoys broad political support — unlike its U.S. counterpart. That support, and the fact that the economic benefits of renewables are spread throughout German society, may protect the sector from a flood of cheap gas.

Also unlike in the U.S., the EU has a carbon permit trading program. The system is flawed, but there is pressure to make the cost of emitting carbon conform better to the economic and social consequences of climate change. Will that be enough to stop a surge in artificially cheap natural gas? I don’t know and Gordon’s point deserves serious consideration.

The U.S. suffers from climate-denial disorder. Fortunately, it hasn’t gone viral—or global. Osha Gray Davidson’s refreshing Clean Break: The Story of Germany’s Energy Transformation and What Americans Can Learn From It tells the story of how one rich country has committed to transforming its economy into one powered by low-carbon renewable technologies.

via Book Review: Germany’s Power Play | Book Reviews.