Green

NASCAR, best known for pushing the speed envelope, has launched a new traffic safety campaign with a sustainable twist. Rather than focusing narrowly on strategies to help drivers to look out for their own lives, the campaign deploys a broad message of taking responsibility for the safety of others. According to a press release launch, the campaign's mission goes far beyond road safety to encourage "personal responsibility for our planet and its people, especially teens."

The mix of racing and planet-saving may seem like an odd paring, but NASCAR has a green track record and other organized sports such as baseball and football have increasingly taken it upon themselves to bring the green message to their fans. In fact, according to NASCAR, racing fans may be at least slightly more receptive to adopting sustainability-related actions than the general public.

The new campaign makes more sense if you think of it in the context of green driving. The goal of green driving is to be more environmentally responsible behind the wheel by saving fuel and reducing tailpipe emissions, but road safety is a significant secondary benefit of green driving basics: no speeding, tailgating or weaving, and avoiding jackrabbit starts and stops.

It's been said that the most important lessons in life are not learned in the classroom, and perhaps in no place is that more true than in the Netherlands where the act of heading to school is itself so enriching. In an age of rising gas prices and skyrocketing cases of childhood obesity, Dutch educators have devised a wonderfully positive way to get kids to and from school -- by letting them pedal there themselves on a brand new fleet of bicycle buses.

Cycling has long been the preferred way of commuting in the Netherlands, thanks in part to their world-class system of bike paths, but now even young schoolchildren can get in on the action. With the purchase of what may be the first-ever fleet of bicycle school buses, Dutch kids as young as 4 years old are experiencing just how fun and easy getting around without a car can be.

Each bike bus is designed to hold eleven kids up to the age of 12, who along with an adult driver, provide the pedal-power to carry them to school and back. For times when the team of youngsters isn't enough, like on steep inclines or when just a handful of passengers are left to be dropped off, a built in electric motor is there to provide an extra boost.

So far, Dutch manufacturer Tolkamp Metaalspecials has sold around two dozen of the bicycle buses across the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany -- and the idea seems to be catching on. In an interview with FastCo.exist, bike bus creator Thomas Tolkamp says that orders have begun pouring in from around the globe.

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Some deal.  BP gets the gold mine and its victims get the shaft.  And a few lawyers will get vacation homes - though they won't be so stupid as to build them on the Gulf Coast.

On Friday night, the judge-picked lawyers for 120,000 victims of the Deepwater Horizon blow-out cut a back-room deal with oil company BP PLC which will save the lawyers the hard work of a trial and save the oil giant billions of dollars.  It will also save the company the threat of exposing the true and very ugly story of the Gulf of Mexico oil platform blow-out.

I have been to the Gulf and seen the damage -- and the oil that BP says is gone.  Miles of it.  As an economist who calculated damages for plaintiffs in the Exxon Valdez oil spill case, I can tell you right now that there is no way, no how, that the $7.8 billion BP says it will spend on this settlement will cover that damage, the lost incomes, homes, businesses and boats, let alone the lost lives -- from cancers, fetal deformities, miscarriages, and lung and skin diseases.

Two years ago, President Barack Obama forced BP to set aside at least $20 billion for the oil spill's victims.  This week's settlement will add exactly ZERO to that fund.  Indeed, BP is crowing that, adding in the sums already paid out, the company will still have spent less than the amount committed to the Obama fund.

The latest version of the National Survey of American Public Opinion on Climate Change, conducted in December 2011, shows that Americans' belief in climate change is again climbing.

Now 62% of people surveyed agreed that there is "solid evidence that the average temperature on Earth has been getting warmer over the past four decades." That's a 7% increase from the spring of 2011 and 10 percentage points higher than in the spring on 2010—though still below fall 2008 when nearly three-quarters of Americans thought the planet was warming.

Looking at demographic factors such as gender, race, and education, though the exact percentages vary somewhat they are roughly in line with a two-thirds belief that the planet is warming, one quarter that it's not, and the rest note sure. However, when looked at on political party lines, more significant differences emerge.

For Democrats 78% say there is solid evidence of warming and just 15% say there isn't. Independents break down as 55% saying yes there's warming, 30% no there isn't, and 15% unsure. Going further the other way, 47% of Republicans say there is warming, 42% say there isn't, and 7% are unsure—which is doubly interesting in that when it comes to Republican politicians, at least at the national level climate change denial has become a de facto party line, however out of step that is with Republican voters.

As for why people believe that the planet is warming, personal observation is the leading factor, increasing over the past few years. Roughly half of people said that warmer temperatures or weather changes they've experienced was it.

Interestingly, despite all the past hype about the influence of An Inconvenient Truth over people's acceptance or non-acceptance of climate change, back in 2008 just 2% of people responded that the film was the primary influence (only declining species was lower). Ever since then it has dropped below 1% in influence, with observed warmer temperatures and weather changes climbing, as well as human activity all climbing.

Elizabeth Kolbert: It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.

Humanity is putting its foot on the accelerator even though the world’s top scientists and governments have repeatedly explained we are headed over a cliff. The people who will suffer the most are people who have not contributed to this  impending catastrophe —  future generations and the poorest among us.

This is such a colossally immoral and unethical act —  collectively and in many cases individually — that most people, including the overwhelming majority of the so-called intelligentsia, simply choose to ignore it on a daily basis. That won’t save a livable climate, however, nor it will stop future generations from cursing our names.

And so it is not surprising that many immoral and unethical acts that regularly occur on a far less grand scale are condoned or winked at or simply ignored.

Every day, countless organizations spread misinformation aimed at delaying the action needed to avoid destroying a livable climate, which will cause billions to suffer — and needlessly, since every major independent study makes clear that the cost of action is incredibly low. Many of the disinformers routinely attack and smear climate scientists. Some routinely publish their e-mails, encouraging their readers to cyber-bully scientists who are doing nothing more than trying to inform the world of the consequences of its untenable choices.  But we have become inured to it — heck, there’s a whole TV network devoted to spreading lies — yawn, let’s change the channel to something we like.

The media continues to reduce coverage of the story of the century — “Silence of the Lambs 2: Media Herd’s Coverage of Climate Change Drops Sharply — Again. The three network news stations broadcast 14 climate change stories with a total air time of 32.5 minutes in 2011,  down from 32 stories and 90.5 minutes last year and well below the 2007 peak of 147 segments totaling 386 minutes. This is a stunning collective lapse in judgment by editors and producers. But the media — in a classic act of circular benchmarking — sees everyone else in the media doing it, so the inconceivable becomes an accepted norm.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and The Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) have long been in the anti-terrorist racket, but now it appears that terrorists include people like you and me who might support Greenpeace and PETA. According to documents released under the Access Information legislation and reported in the Globe and Mail,

Federal security services have identified Greenpeace and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals as the kind of “multi-issue extremist” groups that pose a threat to Canadians.

Greenpeace director Bruce Cox says it is ridiculous.

This is part of the government’s attitude that ‘you’re either with us or against us,’” Mr. Cox said. “We do not pose a threat to public safety and we are not a violent threat.

PETA loves every minute of it, every time they are in the paper, as long as they spell their name right.

If it is extreme to oppose bashing in the heads of baby seals, anally electrocuting chinchillas for a coat collar, scalding chickens to death in defeathering tanks, and poisoning cats in cruel lab experiments, then so be it,” said Jane Dollinger, the group’s Washington-based spokeswoman.

More in the Globe and Mail.

Now you or I might say that's fine, it doesn't affect me, I am not a member of these groups, I just donate a bit of money to them. But when you combine this with the changes that the government proposes on warrantless internet surveillance, you have a real problem in this country. Vic Toews, the Minister of Public Safety, has just introduced legislation that allows warrantless access to all kinds of private information from our internet service provider, all under the guise of dealing with child pornography. It is even called the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act. The National Post summarizes the powers given under the act:

In addition to a name, address, phone number and email address, companies would also be required to hand over the Internet protocol address and a series of device identification numbers, allowing police to build a detailed profile on a person using their digital footprint and to facilitate the tracking of a person’s movement through the location of their cellphone.

Toews says that if you are against the act, "you are with us, or you are with the child pornographers." People of all political stripes are outraged; even the conservative writer Margaret Wente says On Internet privacy, I’m with the child pornographers.

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When Hurricane Irene made landfall along the Eastern seaboard last summer, crippling dozens of communities with record flooding, many folks called the storm a '100-year event' -- but a new study suggests that it will be much sooner than century until we see the next one.

A team of scientists from MIT and Princeton University utilized hurricane simulators to determine with what frequency powerful storms could lead to flooding under a variety of climate model projections, and what they found makes all previous usage of the term 'storm of the century' mere hyperbole. According to researchers, climate change's effects on weather systems might mean storms like Hurricane Irene, once considered rare, occur every 3 to 20 years.

From MIT News Office:

To simulate present and future storm activity in the region, the researchers combined four climate models with a specific hurricane model. The combined models generated 45,000 synthetic storms within a 200-kilometer radius of Battery Park, at the southern tip of Manhattan.

They studied each climate model under two scenarios: a “current climate” condition representing 1981 to 2000 and a “future climate” condition reflecting the years 2081 to 2100, a prediction based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s projections of future moderate carbon dioxide output. While there was some variability among the models, the team generally found that the frequency of intense storms would increase due to climate change.

As was proved last year by Hurricane Irene, the floods resulting from such powerful storms are among the chief contributors to property damage and loss of human life, which makes building infrastructure to withstand them all the more important. In the wake of Irene, flooding left hundreds homeless and stranded whole communities as swollen rivers washed away roads and bridges -- some of which had stood for a century's worth of strong weather.

In light of these new findings on the increasing frequency of powerful storms, MIT researcher Ning Lin says that coastal cities must prepare to brace for these once-rare storms:

“When you design your buildings or dams or structures on the coast, you have to know how high your seawall has to be. You have to decide whether to build a seawall to prevent being flooded every 20 years.”

To make matters worse, another study out of Yale warns that climate change isn't the only factor that is likely to lead to deadlier and more expensive storms over the next century. As TreeHugger Mat explained earlier this month, "tropical cyclones will cause more than four times the damage in 2100 than they do today, increasing from $26 billion to $109 billion." The reason? A rapidly increasing human population, accompanies by more and more development along flood-vulnerable coastal regions.

For decades now, fossil fuel company executives and D.C. politicians have worked together to ensure that coal and oil prices stay low enough to keep the American people hooked. In his new book Greedy Bastards, Dylan Ratigan explains how “vampire industries” like oil and coal have forged “an unholy alliance with government based not just on the money that they contribute to political campaigns and spend on lobbying but on their ability to hypnotize us with false prices.”

Industry gets tax breaks, subsidies, military support in volatile regions, the right to use our air and water like a sewer, and assurance that the government will clean up its environmental messes. Politicians get campaign contributions, a steady flow of dirty energy, and a talking point to brandish about how they kept gas affordable.

But the American public just gets screwed.

We get stuck with a dirty, polluting energy regime; one that enriches a few one percenters while making the public sick and hobbling American innovation. As Ratigan puts it in his book, a handful of greedy bastards are fleecing Americans with a “Very Bad Deal”. Fossil fuels seem cheap and convenient now, but when we get hit with the true costs—of a spoiled environment, of missing out on vital future industries like clean energy, of a mounting public health burden, of possible war—we’ll see we were had.

Experts believe that oil companies alone receive $10-40 billion in handouts yearly. A conservative study from the Environmental Law Institute found that from 2002-2008, oil companies received $72 billion of taxpayer’s hard-earned cash. Another report from Management Information Systems, Inc found that between 1950 and 2010, $594 billion was spent directly subsidizing fossil fuels—and the lion’s share of that, almost two thirds, went to the oil industry. Coal, too, receives billions of dollars in annual federal handouts.

Clearly, government assistance distorts the price of fossil fuels, making them artificially cheaper. But those direct subsidies are nothing compared to the enormous costs the public indirectly pays for fossil fuels.

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We've long known that JP Morgan Chase is one of the world's foremost investors in coal. The giant bank has been roundly criticized for, among other things, funding immensely destructive mountaintop removal operations. So it should come as no surprise that the institution spends an estimated $22 billion annually on coal investments.

And that helped Chase earn the top slot in a recent BankTrack analysis of the financial institutions that invest most heavily in "climate-killing" coal. Indeed, the ethical banking organization has just unveiled a list of the Top 20 'Climate Killer' Banks, and there are few surprises. Here are the numbers:

As you can see, the runners up are also big American banks. Citi invests $18.27 billion annually, and Bank of America dumps $16.79 billion into the coal industry.

The report also explains the objective of revealing these numbers, noting that "Coal-fired power plants are not cheap to build. Typically, a 600 Megawatt plant will cost around US$ 2 billion. Power producers therefore rely heavily on banks to provide and mobilize the necessary capital for coal plants."

BankTrack also quotes Tristen Taylor of Earthlife Africa Johannesburg, with a startling observation: "Our figures clearly show that coal financing is on the rise. Between 2005 and 2010, coal financing almost doubled. If we don't take Banks to task now, coal financing will continue to grow." And more coal financing means more coal plants. And more coal plants means more greenhouse gas emissions. And more ... you get the picture.

The report showcases yet another way in which the 1% is exerting their influence at the expense of the 99% -- who, it should be noted, call for more investment in clean energy every year in clear majorities.

The Most Anti-Environment House of Representatives in the History of Congress?
The year of the 112th Congress will always be remembered as a turbulent one: the bitter partisan battles and the debt ceiling standoff that nearly sunk the nation's economy have assured as much. But this was also the year of a historically anti-environmental Congress, thanks primarily to a House of Representatives newly stocked with Tea Party candidates eager to roll back environmental protections and support the fossil fuels industry.

In total, the House of Representatives registered a record-breaking 191 anti-environment votes--more than one vote against the environment for every day Congress was in session.

A new report, released yesterday by a cadre of Congress's (few) concerned environmental advocates, has analysed and indexed the carnage. The authors of the report, Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Rep. Edward J. Markey, and Rep. Howard L. Berman, pulled no punches in their conclusion: this was "the most anti-environment house in the history of Congress".

Here's a breakdown of the findings from the report:

• "The House of Representatives averaged more than one anti-environmental vote for every day the House was in session in 2011.
• More than one in five of the legislative roll call votes taken in 2011 – 22% – were votes to undermine environmental protections.
• On average, 228 Republican members of the House – 94% of the Republican members – voted for the anti-environment position during these roll call votes. On average, 164 Democratic members of the House – 86% of the Democratic members – voted for the pro-environment position."