Illegal Logging in Brazil Triples in 2008

Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research has found that illegal logging in the Amazon has tripled since last year.  A list of the 100 worst offenders was released by Carlos Minc, the Brazilian environment minister, and the government’s own Incra land and agrarian reform agency was listed as number one.  Minc has said he intends to press criminal charges.  The rise is illegal logging is due mostly to rising food prices, which has encouraged soy farmers and cattle ranchers to press farther into the Amazon.  Because it is an election year, local officials are less likely to enforce anti-logging laws, trying to keep locals happy.  The environment ministry is going to send in 3,000 heavily armed environmental police to see that the illegal deforestation stops.

Paul Newman dead at 83

Paul Newman, the actor and businessman, died Saturday at the age of 83.  He was the man behind Newman’s Own, an all natural organic food company that’s been donating all of it’s profits (so far $250 million) to charity since it’s start 25 years ago.

Green Jobs Day

Strong words from Al Gore

Yesterday at the Clinton Global Initiative talks, former Vice President Al Gore encouraged civil disobedience to stop the building of new coal power plants that do not utilize carbon sequestration. He also suggested that criminal investigations be launched at companies that deny the existence of global warming in order to increase their profits:

“I believe for a carbon company to spend money convincing the stock-buying public that the risk from the global climate crisis is not that great represents a form of stock fraud because they are misrepresenting a material fact… I hope these state attorney generals around the country will take some action on that.”

Check out this article for more details.

Department of the Interior to give polar bear “critical habitat”

The polar bear was given “threatened” status in May by the federal government (and in spite of a law suit by vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, will probably get to keep it). That status didn’t actually translate into action until just recently - as part of a legal settlement with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Greenpeace, there is now a March 31, 2010 deadline to designate a “critical habitat” for the polar bear. Hopefully not too many more of them die before then…

Presidential Candidates on “Clean Coal”?

The Obama and McCain campaigns both keep mentioning our need to explore “clean coal” in addition to other energy supplies. But what exactly does that mean? Clean Coal, the tech for which is not 100% worked out yet, means that when a power plant burns coal, it captures and sequesters the carbon released and doesn’t let it get into the atmosphere. That sounds OK (better than regular power plants, for sure), but if you look deeper you see that carbon is by far not the only problem (thanks to treehugger.com for compiling the quotes):

“Clean coal is a myth. There’s no such thing. Even with carbon sequestration, you still have mercury, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide. You still have to transport coal, which requires diesel. Hardwood forests are destroyed, thousands of miles of waterways are poisoned and tops of mountains are completely erased. Talk about a massive loss of natural capital!

And if you think the supply angle justifies clean coal, think again.

While coal advocates will scream from the missing mountaintops that we have a 250-year supply, they neglect to mention that that particular estimate is based on a USGS study from the 1970s. Today, however, the USGS believes that only about five percent of those reserves are recoverable with today’s technology and prices. And that’s also based on today’s consumption rate. If we end up using more coal, which some suspect could be possible with the integration of “clean coal” technology (not to mention the continued depletion of natural gas), the rate of consumption could be much higher.”

-Jeff Siegel, from Can Sarah Palin Become an Energy Security Specialist?:

Here is another quote:

“…a potentially critical factor. Historically, coal combustion wastes rarely exhibit the characteristics of hazardous waste. However, if coal burning utilities and the so-called “clean coal plants” were required to meet air emissions standards protective of human health, fly ash produced by them could be regulated as hazardous waste due to the elevated levels of mercury that would result. We might suppose that any fly ash with hazardous characteristics due to heavy metal content would have to be sent to special and expensive waste fills or be treated at great cost.”

-John Laumer in There Is No Such Thing As Clean Coal

One last voice:

“Even if we suppose that big coal starts to build the expensive gasification plants soon and that they can solve most of the technical problems with geosequestration, they are not saying that they want to replace old, extremely dirty plants with the new ones; they want to build new ones and keep the old ones. They almost certainly won’t bear the liability of CO2 leaks from underground storage, so that’s an extra cost for taxpayers, not to mention that the electricity coming from coal gasification plants that do carbon sequestration will be more expensive because a lot of energy is lost in the process of running the plants, in the actual sequestration operating, and the huge costs of building the pipelines, the plants, drilling the holes, maintenance & monitoring, etc, will be passed on to the customers (or they’ll ask for subsidies - same difference).”

- Michael Graham Richard on Why Carbon Sequestration Won’t Save U

So where do the candidats stand on this issue?:

McCain prioritizes offshore drilling, domestic natural gas, clean coal, nuclear, and then renewables. According to his website, McCain would give $2 Billion for clean coal technology research and development, and once we got it figured out we would export the technology to places like China, creating jobs and “allowing the U.S. to play a greater role in the international green economy.”

Obama’s campaign materials prioritize renewables, clean coal, drilling, then nuclear. His idea is that requiring emissions caps would incentivize builders of new power plants to only build clean coal facilities.

Palin doesn’t seem to have an opinion about energy beyond drilling, specifically in the Alaskan Arctic Wildlife Preserve.

Biden’s view is actually contrary to Obama’s - he doesn’t like clean coal and never has. When asked about it by voters, he tries to avoid the question of US coal use and spin it to something like “we need to develop the technology so we can give it to China so they don’t poison us with their dirty coal.”

Global Warming may be reaching tipping point in the Arctic

One thing that global warming scientists are worried about is reaching a “tipping point.”  Right now, global emissions and global temperatures are rising at a certain rate, and that’s bad.  But what’s worse is when effects from those emissions compound, start a feedback loop, and start to snowball (eh… please disregard that joke).  We may be reaching that point in the Arctic right now.  Global rises in temperature are thawing permafrost - and a lot of that permafrost is in northern peat bogs and the Arctic ocean bottom.  Once those areas thaw, large amounts of formerly trapped methane (a powerful greenhouse gas) will be released into the atmosphere, speeding global warming significantly, leading to even more drastic effects on the planet.  Over the summer and through September scientists found that permafrost is indeed thawing, and at a much faster rate than expected.  Some areas of the ocean are even releasing methane “chimneys” - columns of methane gas that are so forceful that they don’t just break apart and bubble to the surface, they shoot into the air.

Reusable Cups vs. Airlines…

This article from the Life Less Plastic blog highlights some of the more nonsensical hurdles we all sometimes face on our path to a greener future. On an American Airlines flight the author asked the flight attendant to pour her coffee into her reusable stainless steel mug instead of a throwaway styrofoam cup, and the flight attendant said no. I’m guessing the flight attendant wasn’t a bad person or anything, she was probably just caught off guard by the request and panicked. But this story does help us open our eyes to some of the other absurdities that go on around us all the time - ones that we ourselves would be startled about if someone pointed them out to us (though hopefully our gut reactions wouldn’t be “no”). How many ketchup packets do you need with that?

Raising awareness can be as simple as just living our lives in a common sense green way (like bringing our own mug or thermos if we know we’re going to the mud truck 300 days a year) - people will take notice on their own with no special effort on our part. I’d be willing to bet the flight attendant did a lot of thinking about the eco-impact of the airline industry’s food and beverage practices later during that flight - with no preachy speech from some blogger about how styrofoam is an endocrine disruptor.

Here is one example of an obvious yet easy to overlook eco-stupidity that I see play out pretty much every day: we go to the deli and get a sandwich wrapped in foil or wax paper or plastic, and then when we check out we put the already perfectly secure sandwich in a plastic bag. We walk about one block back to our office and then immediately throw out the unnecessary plastic bag, which takes pretty much forever to break down in a landfill somewhere. We at Curious should be more conscientious about little things like this and always request no bag - and no condiments or napkins that we don’t need either. Take it as far as you can. The more we become aware and act on our awareness, the more others will realize the green way just makes more sense too, and join in. Let’s make a Curious pact - no more plastic bags at lunch!

“Kill A Watt” and “Wattson”

Every month we find out how much electricity we use at Curious (and in our homes too!), but pinning down exactly where the biggest energy drain is coming from can be tricky. If you plug an appliance into the Kill A Watt device and then plug Kill A Watt into an outlet, it gives a readout of exactly how much power is being drawn. The Wattson works with a similar idea, but it takes readings for the entire household/business. The Wattson gives a readout of current electricity demand for any given moment plus info on your current money “burn rate.” Either device could be useful for determining which appliances desperately need a green upgrade and which are using only their fair share of energy.

How much good does Energy Star actually do?

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calculates that enough electricity was saved by Energy Star appliances in 2005 to prevent 23 million cars’ worth of green house gas emissions.  They also saved consumers about $12 billion.