Planetary Ruin

SciDev.Net: The current trend of increasing ocean acidification, which threatens fisheries around the world, is driven mainly by man-made changes and is higher even than that seen at the end of the last ice age, some 11,000 year ago, a study has said. Much of the carbon released by human activity ends up in the oceans, increasing their acidity and reducing the growth of corals and molluscs, which in turn may affect fisheries and aquaculture. Fisheries in the Pacific and the Caribbean may suffer the most...

Over at the American Spectator, my colleagues Vincent Vernuccio and Matt Patterson have an excellent piece about how the President’s Keystone punt has been received by organized labor. Here’s a roundup of reactions noted in their oped:

• Terry O’Sullivan, head of the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA), has called Obama’s action “politics at its worst,” saying that “once again the President has sided with environmentalists instead of blue collar construction workers.” O’Sullivan angrily vowed that “workers across the U.S. will not forget this.”

• Mark H. Ayers, president of the Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO has publicly hammered the jobs issue. In a January 18th press release, Ayers voiced the frustration of many union workers, saying “…with a national unemployment rate in construction at 16 percent nationally, it is beyond disappointing that President Obama placed a higher priority on politics rather than our nation’s number one challenge: jobs.”

• James T. Callahan, president of the International Union of Operating Engineers, agrees, complaining to the Washington Post that Obama’s decision was “…a blow to America’s construction workers,” who are struggling in “the sector hardest hit by the recession.”

Read the whole thing here.

Salon: If we could see the world with a particularly illuminating set of spectacles, one of its most prominent features at the moment would be a giant carbon bubble, whose bursting someday will make the housing bubble of 2007 look like a lark. As yet - as we shall see - it’s unfortunately largely invisible to us. In compensation, though, we have some truly beautiful images made possible by new technology. Last month, for instance, NASA updated the most iconic photograph in our civilization’s gallery:...

Reuters: BP ratcheted up the rhetoric around multi-billion dollar claims from the Gulf oil spill by warning it would "vigorously" contest lawsuits over one of the world's worst environmental disasters. While reiterating BP's "bias for settling" at hearings scheduled later this month, CEO Bob Dudley said he would only do so "on fair and reasonable terms." As he unveiled higher fourth quarter profit on Tuesday and a rise in the dividend, which he said showed BP was putting the spill behind it, Dudley...

New York Times: New York regulators have received more than 60,000 public comments on the state’s plan to allow hydrofracking, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s top environmental official said on Tuesday at a hearing. Joe Martens, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, spoke at a joint legislative hearing on the Cuomo administration’s proposed 2012-13 budget for his agency. (As I report in Tuesday’s paper, the governor’s budget allocates no money for ushering in the drilling over the next year.)...

Thanks to the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, motorists are subject to a Soviet-style production quota for biofuels. Every year, Americans must purchase greater volumes of biofuels–motor fuels distilled from corn, soy, and plant matter–until 2022, when the production quota tops out at 36 billion gallons. Fifteen billion gallons of that figure would come from corn ethanol. Most of the rest must come from cellulosic ethanol, a fuel that doesn’t yet exist. (That’s right, the U.S. Congress passed, and President George W. Bush signed, a bill that requires the production of 16 billion gallons of an imaginary fuel). For biodiesel, the Energy Independence and Security Act requires the production of 500 million gallons in 2009, 650 million gallons in 2010, 800 million gallons in 2011, and 1 billion gallons this year. Thereafter, the biodiesel mandate remains at 1 billion gallons, although EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has the discretion to increase the quota.

Last year, EPA proposed to use its authority to increase the biodiesel mandate in 2013 to 1.28 billion gallons—a 28% increase over the statutory minimum. In December, however, EPA postponed the announcement of the 2013 production quota for biodiesel, and the Agency left open the possibility that it would keep the biodiesel mandate at 1 billion gallons. Naturally, EPA’s reticence outraged the biodiesel industry. According to Energy & Environment GreenWire (subscription required),

“There’s no question that the production capacity is there. The biodiesel industry can do it, and there’s no question that the 1.28 can be met,” said Ben Evans, director of federal communications at the National Biodiesel Board. “It’s really surprising to us that there would be this hesitation and the potential for moving it back to a billion. To us, it would really be a devastating blow.”

Of course, the effect would be “devastating” because the biodiesel industry simply cannot compete on an open fuel market. Don’t take my word for it! Even biodiesel producers are willing to concede that their product is inferior. From the same GreenWire article:

“If [EPA] backs off that once it said it, it’s sending a signal that it’s potentially going to let this industry swing, and by swing I mean from the end of the rope,” said [Joe] Gershen, [director of sales and marketing at Crimson Renewable Energy LP, a California-based biodiesel company].

The biodiesel producers’ warning of imminent catastrophe absent increased government support harks back to the wise words of the Toronto Sun editorial board, “…since renewable energy can’t survive without massive government subsidy, when you cut the subsidy, you cut the jobs that subsidy creates.”

Press Association: The UK's greenhouse gas emissions rose in 2010, the first increase since 2003, figures confirmed today. The final estimates for 2010 showed that greenhouse gas output rose by more than 3%, largely due to an increase in gas use for heating homes in the face of cold weather at the beginning and the end of the year. Emissions from the residential sector rose by almost 15% from 2009, the statistics from the Department of Energy and Climate Change showed. The rise in emissions was also driven...

Inter Press Service: To meet the challenges of the 21st century, including climate change, feeding the world and eliminating poverty, we need to free ourselves from the "thought traps" that prevent us from seeing the world as it truly is and narrow our vision of how to respond. At same time, we need to eliminate "privately-held government", says Frances Moore Lappé, author of "EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think to Create the World We Want" published by Nation Books. Lappé has written 18 books, including the very influential...

Guardian: Seen from the air, the coral ring that separates the deep blue of the ocean from the lighter water of the lagoon lends Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls a sense of normality. But the picture changes dramatically as you come closer. Parts of the islands are covered in concrete and the vegetation usually found in the Tuamoto archipelago has given way to aito trees, a form of she-oak. "At home on Tuamoto we depend on the island for our livelihood but here it is dead," says an indignant Tuamotuan. France...

Guardian: Labour has accused the chancellor of the exchequer of "actively revelling in contempt for environmental protection", in the latest broadside in the row over green policies that has consumed the coalition since the resignation of Chris Huhne on Friday. Caroline Flint, shadow energy secretary, warned that the Tory right was breaking apart the cross-party consensus on climate change, thereby endangering the UK's economic health as well as threatening the planet with untrammelled global warming. Her...