Erich Pica2013-05-21T17:22:25-04:00Erich Picahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=erich-picaCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Erich PicaGood old fashioned elbow grease.Don't Be Afraid of the Clifftag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.23030412012-12-17T10:23:16-05:002013-02-16T05:12:01-05:00Erich Picahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/erich-pica/fiscal cliff, the fiscal slope or an "austerity crisis," but no matter the nomenclature, a battle is underway over the role of government in the U.S.: Should we take care of our own or should people be left to fend for themselves?
Our answer will reverberate for decades. Programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, the social safety net that so many Americans depend on, are at risk. If government protection is eroded for those most in need, it is impossible to imagine the country coming together to avoid climate change or to deal with its impacts. The ability to maintain our social safety net depends on those who can afford it, the richest Americans, being asked to make a bigger contribution. We are not broke; in fact, we are the richest country in the world. The money is there for teachers, school lunches, and medicine for the sick. Letting the Bush tax giveaways for the wealthiest Americans fully expire would restore needed money to the treasury.
President Obama has one giant piece of leverage available to make sure that the will of the people is served - the Bush tax giveaways go away if he takes us over the cliff.
President Obama needs to stand strong and insist on the expiration of the full Bush tax cuts for income over $250,000. Just as importantly he cannot let the Republicans hold us hostage three months down the road; any deal must also increase the debt ceiling. The leverage is on the president's side, since -- as Paul Krugman notes -- "no deal is better than a bad deal." If the Republicans refuse, he must have the courage to take us over the cliff -- it will be a bumpy ride, but it would leave us with the heart of our country still intact.]]>Remember Kalamazoo -- and Fight for a Tar Sands-Free Futuretag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.17039442012-07-26T17:52:57-04:002012-09-25T05:12:06-04:00Erich Picahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/erich-pica/something just wasn't right. On the morning of July 26, 2010, she was preparing to take her two young children to daycare when she noticed a strange odor thick in the air. At that point in the day, Susan didn't know that a tar sands oil pipeline had ruptured in the middle of the night approximately two miles north of her home in Marshall, Michigan or that this would result in the largest and most expensive onshore oil disaster in U.S. history.
That night, her four-and-a-half-year-old son was vomiting and within a few days, her two-year-old daughter developed a strange rash. Soon enough, others in her community were experiencing migraines, nausea, diarrhea and burning in the eyes and throat -- all while county and federal health officials denied the connection between the sudden widespread illnesses and the spill.
Susan Connolly and I have never met, but I can tell you that we share a few things in common: we are both parents who would do anything to keep our children from harm and we are both connected to the great state of Michigan. I grew up in Bainbridge Township, 70 miles west of the head of the spill. Two years ago today, oil giant and pipeline operator Enbridge spilled more than 1,148,229 gallons (what the EPA estimates it's recovered) of tar sands oil into Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River, threatening public health and saturating the local ecosystem before almost reaching the Great Lakes.
This spill -- and Susan's family's pain -- was preventable.
Recent media and regulator scrutiny has catalogued the many systemic problems that plagued the Kalamazoo pipeline disaster and the ensuing cleanup. The most striking problem was the assumption of what was truly being pumped through the pipeline. When first responders arrived on the scene, they thought the six-and-a-half foot tear in the ruptured pipeline 6B was oozing conventional crude. But the pipeline was spilling tar sands oil, a toxic, corrosive substance that acts more like tar than oil in water.
But a drastically increased likelihood of spills is only where the problems begin. When spilled, tar sands oil sinks in water, leaving a plume of chemicals like benzene on the surface to evaporate, simultaneously polluting air and water. Clean up costs for the Kalamazoo disaster have well surpassed a record-breaking $800 million because of the unique challenges of recovering heavy tar sands oil, an unprecedented task that's left EPA officials scratching their heads.
The already high-risk 6B pipeline's disaster potential was compounded by Enbridge's own incompetence. Enbridge appallingly ignored alarm bells and instead twice pumped more oil into pipeline 6B before shutting if off after 17 long hours. The company's record makes the claims of its emergency response plan -- that a rupture would be detected in a mere five minutes and the damaged segment closed three minutes after that -- laughable. A damning National Transportation Safety Board report released several weeks ago noted that Enbridge knew about the pipeline's vulnerabilities as early as 2005 but repeatedly chose not to act.
And while Enbridge was reckless, the pipeline regulators we've entrusted to guard the public interest were mostly feckless. NTSB chairperson Deborah Hersman, referencing the agency's report, said that Enbridge and the regulatory agency in charge of pipeline oversight handled the disaster as haplessly as "the Keystone Cops."
Earlier this month, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration proposed a $3.7 million civil penalty for Enbridge's mishandling of the Kalamazoo spill. That's the largest fine in the agency's history -- but it's a pittance if you consider that the fine is less than half of a percent of the total cost of the spill, not counting the irreversible damage done to the environment and public health. Put another way, Enbridge was fined just $3.22 per gallon of oil spilled according to EPA estimates.
I did not choose to breathe that foul air. I did not choose to lose a summer to... vacuum trucks, fan boats and helicopters and strangers on my river banks. ... I did not choose to close a business and I certainly did not choose to watch the geese struggle while covered in oil. Enbridge made that decision for me.
And they're now part of a larger fight. Their voices are bolstered by the resistance of indigenous communities in Canada paying for tar sands development with their lives and cultural heritage. They're joined in solidarity this week by people across the country from Seattle, Washington to Portland, Maine solemnizing the Kalamazoo disaster and taking a stand against dirty and dangerous tar sands oil flowing through more land and water.
More than simply a testament to one company's pathological endangerment of the environment and public health, the Kalamazoo tragedy should serve as a powerful cautionary tale. Profit-hungry oil corporations like Enbridge and TransCanada continue to scheme up proposals to introduce or increase the volume of tar sands oil through communities in the Pacific Northwest, the Gulf Coast, New England, Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia.
We know that the risks of the tar sands oil industry don't stop with spills like the one that upended lives along the Kalamazoo. Our nation's pre-eminent climate scientist, Dr. James Hansen, has warned that burning through the tar sands -- source of the world's dirtiest oil -- would mean "game over for the climate." Even if you don't live in the path of an existing or proposed tar sands pipeline, you should be concerned that a climate system spiraling out of control is already on our doorstep.
I, and a growing and powerful movement of people across the country, are fed up with letting rich fossil fuel corporations decide when and where they can irrevocably damage our communities and radically alter the climate system we depend on for survival. Today, on the two-year anniversary of the Kalamazoo spill and in the midst of a summer of unprecedented extreme weather, the human and economic costs of our addiction to 19th-century dirty energy are hitting too close to home. Today and every day, it's up to all of us to remember Kalamazoo, to stand with communities on the front lines of the climate war and to continue to fight for a tar sands-free, justice-fueled future.
]]>San Onofre: We Can't Ignore the Warning Signstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15251792012-05-17T17:29:27-04:002012-07-17T05:12:20-04:00Erich Picahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/erich-pica/
First, when your car's engine light starts flashing without warning; clouds of steam rise from under the hood; the needle on the temperature gauge sticks in the red zone -- stop the car.
Second, if you hear clunking and vibrations from the engine -- stop the car.
In both instances, I decided to run the car anyway and ended up replacing a blown engine. Costing money and needlessly putting lives, including my own, at risk.
Unbelievably, Southern California Edison is faced with a similar decision with its crippled San Onofre nuclear power plant on the coast in Orange County. The reactors have already released radioactive steam and are literally shaking themselves apart. Instead of keeping the reactors shut down, Southern Edison is rushing to restart the reactors and running them as hard as possible.
San Onofre's twin reactors have been shut down since January, after leaks developed in some of the thousands of thin, tightly packed tubes that carry radioactive steam from the plant's generators -- crucial components that were meant to last for decades but failed after less than two years of operation. As the Associated Press reported, Edison gambled more than half a billion dollars -- costs it passed on to its customers -- on a new generator design in an attempt to increase the power produced by the reactors.
Since then, Edison has failed to provide the detailed technical information required by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to decide if and when the reactors can be restarted. Instead, Edison is pushing for a restart as early as next month. The utility insists that San Onofre can be operated safely if some of the faulty tubes are plugged and the reactors are run at reduced power.
A new report (PDF) commissioned by Friends of the Earth found that the design of the generators themselves is faulty -- a problem that could have been detected if Edison had allowed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to properly review its plans before the new generators were installed. The report by Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer of 40 years' experience, found that plugging tubes and restarting the reactors at reduced power won't solve the problem -- and could make it worse, risking a catastrophe that would endanger the 8-million-plus people who live within 50 miles of the reactors and millions more beyond. Friends of the Earth is working with communities and activists throughout southern California to try to avoid such a disaster and to demand no restart of the San Onofre reactors.
We've also released a new ad (below) sounding the alarm about Edison's risky scheme, urging concerned Californians to contact U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. Sen. Boxer, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, has already stepped up, asking the NRC and Edison by May 21 to produce documentation about what Edison knew about the new generators' design and whether the agency adequately reviewed them.
Edison has raised the spectre of blackouts this summer if San Onofre, representing half of the nuclear power capacity in the state, remains shut down. This is an irresponsible threat. The agency that manages the state's power grid says blackouts can be avoided through energy conservation. San Onofre must remain closed so that California can move toward a clean and safe energy future.
]]>Occupy Wall Street: A New Avenue for Hope and Changetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.11050822011-11-22T11:45:41-05:002012-01-22T05:12:01-05:00Erich Picahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/erich-pica/
I recently spoke to my father about Occupy Wall Street. He's not particularly political, and is a retired teacher and farmer living in a conservative part of rural Michigan. The fact that the protests are inspiring someone like him speaks volumes about their potential.
He, like many Occupy activists, is concerned about the direction the country is going, the out-of-control corporate greed destroying our system of government and the lack of honest and civil discourse from both political parties about solving real problems. Occupy Wall Street is becoming an outlet that my dad sees as expressing his disappointment and anger about the system, and as a way to create positive change. My dad is not alone. Occupy Wall Street is tapping into populist anger and giving hope to a generation of Americans that are being robbed of their opportunity to aspire to and achieve their dreams.
Call me a romantic, but I truly believe something wonderful is being created with the organic growth of the Occupy movement. In all the excitement (and relative ambiguity) surrounding the Occupy movement, there's a chance for all of us to make our voices heard. Real people with real problems are crying out in a way that's too obvious and too important for our representatives to ignore. This is no lame-duck movement that is paralyzed and on its way out, scared off by eviction, police brutality or cold temperatures (in fact, for a while the Occupy Wall Street camp in New York City was generating their own electricity for heat). It's a powerful form of protest, one in which bands of people from different walks of life unite under a common cause: to remind our government that democracy is about people, not corporations.
Friends of the Earth staff have participated in Occupy events in San Francisco, Oakland, New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Edinburgh, Scotland. We also contributed to a solar panel for the Occupy DC folks, and last week our board or directors unanimously passed a statement of support for the movement. The statement affirms that these are our people, our issues, our concerns, and this is our movement to join, listen to and contribute to where possible.
That's not to say we're trying to make it our own -- the movement began without our help, and we don't want to (nor could we) take over -- but we are lending a hand. We are also taking time to reflect on what Occupy is teaching us as an organization (a reminder that change will not come from Washington, but to Washington), and how it is challenging us (to not only resist the free-market, anti-government ideology of neoliberalism that has cost our country so much, but also to work for solutions). The Occupy movement has made us recommit ourselves to our work in the areas of corporate power, tax and budget policy, big banks, trade rules, financial markets and democratic governance.
Fortunately, our Keystone XL campaign has also shown us that democracy and the right to protest our government can be a path toward accomplishing goals: Just last week, President Obama announced his administration's decision to delay the permit process for the Keystone XL project and seek a new environmental impact review. This could force the administration to realize what we already know: that the Keystone XL is not in our national interest.
On November 6, 12,000 protesters circled the White House to demand that President Obama reject the Keystone pipeline. And a few days before that, thousands of peaceful demonstrators participated in a general strike called for by the Occupy Oakland movement. Two mass protests -- one aimed at the White House and the other aimed at Wall Street -- both echoing the same themes of basic accountability, challenging corporate greed and ending the revolving door between industry and government. At the White House rally, many were calling on President Obama to live up to his 2008 campaign pledge, in which he promised not just hope and change, but also an end to the days of lobbyists setting the agenda.
I don't see a lot of hope and change emanating from the White House, but I do see it spreading across the Occupy movement -- and coming from the tens of thousands of activists fighting the Keystone XL pipeline. Hope for change, for unity within a community of fellow citizens, neighbors and people impacted by the out-of-balance economy, for solidarity, and for a new way of thinking.
Hope can be contagious, and where it spreads, it will often catalyze change.
It's time for all of us to catch the fever that Occupy Wall Street already has.]]>Connecting the Dots Between Extreme Weather and Climate Changetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9761092011-09-23T14:35:55-04:002011-11-23T05:12:02-05:00Erich Picahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/erich-pica/
One of their favorite ways to showcase their talent is connect-the-dot books. As an adult, it's pretty easy to see the patterns. Typically you can see the eyes of a puppy, the scales of a dragon, or fire from a lantern. But it's always fun to see the look on my nieces and nephew's face when they discover the pattern after connecting the dots.
As I look at the news and the weather, I see different patterns than I used to. I still see eyes of hurricanes, and large wildfires, and weather-related disasters at unheard of scales. But it seems recent weather has given us an impressive array of dots and patterns we haven't had to connect before. Let's see if we can trace some of them together.
Why is this happening? The answer is simple: Our planet is experiencing climate change that is causing a frightening "new normal" weather pattern.
No, it's not an unproven theory, as some oil lobbyists and politicians would like you to believe. Just as the tobacco industry hired doctors to "prove" that smoking wasn't actually harmful, these powerful oil-and-coal-backed officials are attempting to shroud confirmed science in a fog of uncertainty. But at least 97 percent of climate scientists agree it's a real phenomenon, and this summer, we've been privy to the direct impacts of it. The fact that there is drought in Texas or rain in Vermont is not new or surprising. But the duration of the heat and the extent of the flooding are both unprecedented and disturbing.
True, extreme weather would still occur if the climate weren't changing, but it would occur less frequently and with less ferocity. All weather now takes place in the context of our changed climate, so every weather event is affected by climate change. A recent report by Climate Communication, along with a team of experts from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Weather Underground and the University of California (San Diego), reveals a clear link between the two.
Aside from being incredibly harmful to our environment, the damage from these natural disasters is also extremely costly. According to the Climate Communication report, as of August 30, there have already been 10 extreme weather events this year that cost more than $1 billion each in the United States. From 1980 to 2010, there were 33 such events each decade.
The destructive weather seen across the U.S. this summer leaves no doubt in my mind that when we connect the dots between extreme weather and climate change, we'd see a picture of humanity. We are doing this to ourselves.
The climate of our planet naturally changes on its own, but human activity is speeding up the process and causing extremes the planet would likely not experience without our contribution. By burning fossil fuels, cutting down trees, and trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we are contributing immensely to the destruction of our planet. Our actions are causing irreversible damage and leading to the depletion of our natural resources.
The picture is absolutely clear, as are its implications: Climate change is the defining challenge of our time. How we deal with this problem now will affect every generation that comes after ours. We need a massive effort, nationally and internationally, to limit the damage, and we need to start immediately.
Largely, politicians and the media have failed us. President Obama, who promised a "new chapter" on climate change when he was elected, has delivered precious little and did not even mention the issue in his 2011 State of the Union speech. Many other politicians, mostly but not exclusively Republicans, have done everything in their power to block modest carbon regulations; in April, the House even rejected an amendment simply saying that climate change is real. And the press has allowed politicians to abdicate their responsibility to protect their constituents by treating the threat of climate change as nothing more than another campaign issue.
These so-called "leaders" are making the important decision not to make connections. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, also the front-runner in the GOP race for 2012, calls global warming a "hoax," even as his state experiences the worst drought and wildfires in its history. But these connections lead to inconvenient conclusions. It is far easier to think of climate change as simply a political question, where the worst possible effect will be to harm Mitt Romney's poll numbers. It is time for our nation's leaders to pull their heads out of the sand, before rising seas overwhelm them.
Efficiency is the easiest and most effective way to quickly cut our reliance on carbon pollution-producing fossil fuels, so we should start with stringent new standards. But efficiency won't be enough on its own. We need to tap into financial incentives for industry to clean up its act, including enacting a carbon tax, ending subsidies for polluting industries, and promoting feed-in tariffs to ensure a swift transition to clean, renewable energy. We need to make stopping climate change a national priority.
I hate to rain on anyone's parade, but we're going to have to make sacrifices to ensure we are successful. Or else a lot more parades are going to get rained on, or ruined by tornadoes, or cancelled due to wildfires.
The dots are connecting, and the picture is pretty clear. Climate change is real. It's something human activity is causing, and, unlike many of the other problems we face these days, we can do something about it. Let's get to work.
]]>An Environmental Response to the Budget Debate (Part 1): Sharpening the Green Scissorstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9470382011-09-06T15:12:32-04:002011-11-06T05:12:02-05:00Erich Picahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/erich-pica/like we saw in the past), the environmental community is often blissfully disengaged from broader budget debates. This needs to change.
The budget agreement that increased the debt ceiling, as well as the budget framework being negotiated in the newly created congressional super committee, threatens the very financial foundation that many of our social, environmental, investment and regulatory programs rest upon. The terrible outcome of the debt ceiling debate should serve as a wake-up call for the environmental community. In addition to the $900 billion in cuts already made to the long-term budget, the congressional super committee is now tasked with finding an additional $1.5 trillion in budget savings or revenue. The environmental community must fully engage in the debate over cutting spending from the tax code and the budget, as well as promoting new revenue sources (more to come in part 2 of this series). If we do not, a multi-decade budget framework could be set in place that essentially bankrupts our capacity to rigorously fight climate change, invest in the future of the country and leave a stronger environmental legacy for our children.
Last week, Friends of the Earth and partners took another step into the federal budget debate with the release of our latest Green Scissors report. Green Scissors 2011 identifies 109 environmentally harmful spending programs and tax breaks that, if eliminated or reformed, could save up to $380 billion over five years. The report tells an extremely important narrative: We can reduce environmentally harmful activities while saving billions of federal dollars.
More important than the savings outlined in the report is the diverse coalition that the report brings together. We are partnering with Taxpayers for Common Sense, Public Citizen and The Heartland Institute. Our institutions have radically different perspectives on a range of topics, from the role of government to the need to act decisively on global warming. With this report, we are embracing the often said mantra: "There are no permanent enemies, and no permanent friends, only permanent interests." Some of our friends have beencritical of Friends of the Earth's partnership with the climate-denying Heartland Institute, but if groups as diverse as ours can find common ground with the Green Scissors 2011 report, so too can policymakers, even in this ultra-polarized political climate.
The Green Scissors 2011 report contains the most extensive collection of potential savings since its first publication in 1994. The $380 billion in potential savings represents areas of agreement where there are real or potential negative environmental impacts and fiscal waste. There are 109 recommendations in the report, and we expect there will be debate, disagreement and controversy over the programs and tax breaks we highlight. We invite this debate. We should be vigorously discussing the merits of tax breaks or spending programs in order to ensure that we are holding our government to the highest standards. There are likely more savings available in unexplored areas of the budget and tax code.
Among the choicest cuts from Green Scissors are more than $10 billion a year in oil and gas industry subsidies. President Obama has proposed eliminating many of these subsidies, yet Congress has thus far refused to do so. The American public wants these giveaways ended. It is time for members of Congress to stop listening to special interest lobbyists and start listening to voters.
Another choice cut is the 45-cents-per-gallon tax subsidy that goes to firms that blend dirty corn ethanol into gasoline, something they are already required to do by law. Corn ethanol uses massive amounts of fertilizer and water, and results in soil erosion. We should not be rewarding this damaging energy source. This gift from Congress to the dirty corn ethanol industry must end when it is slated to expire at the end of the year.
There is already substantial discussion about the oil and gas tax breaks and ethanol subsidies. I hope that the savings in this report that come from the agricultural subsidies, transportation infrastructure and land and water will get just as much scrutiny and debate.
But coming up with the list of environmentally harmful cuts is the easy part; eliminating them will be harder. Every subsidy written into law has a powerful special interest behind it that has invested time and money into getting that handout. Corporations will use their money and their lobbyists to make sure that their interests are protected. Friends of the Earth, Taxpayers for Common Sense, Public Citizen and The Heartland Institute are committed to using our strong political ties in our respective conservative and progressive communities to ensure that these potential cuts are a part of the broad political discourse.
In usual times, corporations' influence would be enough to keep the status quo intact. But the existence of the congressional super committee - and the "trigger" that will force across-the-board cuts if the committee doesn't come to agreement about how to reduce the deficit - mean that this is no ordinary time. We have what could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to end polluter giveaways.
It's time to sharpen the Green Scissors and beginning trimming away programs and tax breaks that hurt the environment and waste taxpayer dollars. The next step: raising revenue to defend our ability to save vital programs that protect people and the environment.
]]>Waking Up to a Nuclear Nightmaretag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9074212011-07-25T14:12:09-04:002011-09-24T05:12:01-04:00Erich Picahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/erich-pica/met to hear recommendations about the future of America's nuclear plants after Japan's nuclear crisis. The nuclear industry, which just a year ago had been wildly optimistic about the prospects for a "nuclear renaissance," is now hobbled by concerns over the health, safety and financial ramifications of the ongoing nuclear disaster at Fukushima. After being told for decades that nuclear power is safe, reliable, clean and cheap, it's worth carefully considering how the fantasy of a nuclear dream gave way to the reality of a nuclear nightmare.
The most recent reminder of that terrible reality came when an earthquake and tsunami overwhelmed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, causing fires, explosions, and three complete core meltdowns. 770,000 terabecquerels of radiation were released in just the first few days of the crisis, equivalent to 40 percent of the total radiation released from Chernobyl. Further consequences remain to be seen, as plant operators are still struggling to bring the reactors to a complete shutdown and contain radioactive material, but alarms are already being raised about high radiation levels at elementary schools dozens of miles away. Tens of thousands of evacuees will likely never return to their homes, and radiation spread around Japan and the surrounding ocean is causing major food and health concerns.
The public had previously been roused from its nuclear fantasy when a routine safety check gone wrong at the Chernobyl power plant led to the worst nuclear disaster to date, forcing a quarter million people to permanently evacuate their homes and leaving thousands to struggle with the tragic legacy of cancer as the result of high radiation exposures. Twenty-five years after the disaster, the Chernobyl nuclear reactors lie inside a shaky and structurally unsound concrete sarcophagus at the center of the Exclusion Zone, awaiting the day hundreds or thousands of years from now when the dangerously irradiated area will be safely habitable once more.
And more than thirty years ago, mechanical and human errors woke the public from a pro-nuke slumber when they caused a partial core meltdown in a reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, forcing 140,000 people to evacuate and initiating a cleanup that took 12 years and cost $973 million.
Each of these tragic disasters is a poignant reminder of just how dangerous nuclear power truly is. And there are more minor incidents as well, the risks that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission willfully accommodates by rewriting safety precautions and relaxing regulations: cracked tubing, corroded pipes, broken nozzles, rust, and more. Not only could these factors cripple a reactor in the event of an emergency, but an Associated Press investigation uncovered leaks of radioactive tritium at 48 of 65 sites, with some leaks at hundreds of times the allowable Environmental Protection Agency standard. Among those leaky reactors is the Palisades Power Plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which reported tritium levels above the EPA standard in 2007 and again in 2009. I can see the steam plume of the Palisades plant from the backyard of my father's farm; now I worry that my family might drink irradiated water from that same reactor.
Plutonium-239 has a half life of 24,000 years, but the human memory operates on a far shorter span. As recent tragedies become more distant, it is too easy to fall back on false illusions, even if they are haunted by the ever-present specter of another possible nuclear disaster. If the public is lulled back into the nuclear fantasy of "safe, reliable, clean and cheap," what will be next? A disaster at the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant in Nebraska, surrounded by Missouri floodwater? Meltdowns at the Diablo Canyon or San Onofre nuclear plants in California, both located near a major fault line and the Pacific Coast?
Questions and headaches for the nuclear industry
It is past time to wake up and face the hard truths of this recurring nuclear nightmare. After the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, the nuclear industry is struggling against stiff headwinds in the United States as both old reactors and proposed new reactors around the country meet growing opposition.
A case in point: the recently failed proposal to construct new nuclear reactors in Iowa. In order to pay for the new reactors, MidAmerican Energy wanted legislation that would raise electricity rates. MidAmerican would have kept the money even if it never followed through on actually building the reactors. It was a shoddy deal for ordinary Iowans, and yet the proposal attracted little attention, sailed through committee consideration, and was expected to easily pass the state legislature.
After the Fukushima crisis, things began to change. Just as national support for the construction of new nuclear reactors dropped, Iowans expressed their strong opposition to the MidAmerican proposal, with 75 percent against the bill. Friends of the Earth helped mobilize public sentiment by running print and television ads criticizing the bill and encouraging Iowans to express their concerns to the state legislature. Not surprisingly, state legislators started having doubts as well. "We got the details and realized that the rate payers really have to have all the risk in this thing," said State Senator Bill Dotzler (D-Waterloo). Despite MidAmerican's extensive lobbying, the Iowa state legislature adjourned on July 1 without passing the bill, a major setback for the bill's supporters.
This is just one setback among many. Various proposed nuclear plants in Texas have been scrapped, mainly for financial reasons. Exelon withdrew plans to construct a twin-unit nuclear plant in Victoria County, Texas in order to focus on wind energy instead. After ground was broken for new nuclear reactors in Georgia and South Carolina, construction prospects were impeded by serious questions about the safety of the Westinghouse AP1000 reactors to be built at those sites. Although the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had previously been expected to approve the reactors by the end of summer, significant delays are likely after flawed calculations in Westinghouse's submission "led to more questions," according to NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko.
Existing reactors are facing challenges as well. The Vermont legislature voted 26-4 to shut down the aged Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, which contains a reactor similar in design to the Fukushima Daiichi reactors, although the decision is being disputed by a lawsuit from the plant's operator, Entergy. And Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York recently reaffirmed his intentions to shut down the Indian Point nuclear plant, less than 30 miles from New York City.
Real problems need real solutions
Nuclear power currently supplies 19 percent of all electricity in the United States. Nuclear advocates argue that nuclear is preferable to fossil fuels, but this is a dangerous and misleading argument. There are better options, like renewable energy and increases in energy efficiency.
The challenges for the nuclear industry are even steeper elsewhere. Germany, led by the conservative Angela Merkel, has published a plan to invest heavily in renewable energy and close all of its nuclear reactors by 2017 - without the construction of new coal plants or significant rate hikes. Similarly, Switzerland has pledged to phase out its nuclear reactors by 2034 and make up the difference entirely in renewable energy. Even though nuclear power is currently the source for 30 percent of Japan's energy, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has expressed support for a complete nuclear phase-out. Already, 35 of Japan's 54 nuclear plants have halted operations in the wake of the Fukushima crisis, and "setsuden" conservation measures aim to make up the difference by reducing energy consumption by 15 percent this summer. Furthermore, billionaire Japanese businessman Masayoshi Son has unveiled plans to build solar farms around the country, which would triple Japan's use of renewable energy to 30 percent of the nation's total by 2020.
Altogether, these efforts demonstrate that with innovation and political willpower, an end to nuclear energy is not only possible, but entirely feasible. The idea that nuclear energy could be a safe solution to the world's energy needs was never more than an empty dream. Clearly, nuclear is just another nightmare problem. It's time to wake up to that awful reality and start focusing on better answers.]]>Problems in the Pipelinetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8955832011-07-13T10:26:18-04:002011-09-12T05:12:01-04:00Erich Picahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/erich-pica/
Since the disaster in the Gulf, dozens of pipelines have spilled millions of gallons of oil into streams and rivers across the continent. A year ago, an Enbridge pipeline poured more than 800,000 gallons of tar sands crude into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River, near where I grew up. In May, a Plains All American pipeline that carries tar sands oil spilled more than a million gallons in the Peace Region of Northern Alberta.
Yet as a raging river complicates cleanup efforts along the Yellowstone, an even bigger and more dangerous pipeline is in the works. The oil industry is pushing the Obama administration to approve a permit for TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline, a tar sands oil project that would stretch from Canada to Texas, crossing the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers in Montana, the Platte River and the nation's largest aquifer, the Ogallala, in Nebraska, and dozens more rivers and streams. Moreover, the Keystone XL would carry highly polluting tar sands oil from the most destructive project on the planet. Leading climate scientist James Hansen has warned that exploiting the full potential of Canada's tar sands could trigger the uncontrollable over-heating of our planet.
This pipeline will spill -- the only question is how soon and how badly. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, has ordered ExxonMobil to increase its safety precautions before restarting the Silvertip pipeline, but as Anthony Swift at the Natural Resources Defense Council pointed out last week, the pipeline was already up to code and operating legally before the spill. Even for a traditional oil pipeline, the current regulations do not ensure safe operation.
The proposed Keystone XL pipeline, however, is not a traditional oil pipeline by any definition. First, it's a monster -- stretching nearly 2,000 miles end-to-end, the pipeline would be three times the diameter of the Silvertip, and would carry up to 900,000 barrels of oil a day, more than 20 times the Silvertip's volume.
Second, it would transport tar sands oil, not the traditional oil carried by the Silvertip. The tar sands contain an oil-like chemical called bitumen, which is more solid than liquid at room temperature, so it must be diluted with other volatile liquids and is transported as "diluted bitumen," DilBit for short. DilBit can corrode pipelines faster than traditional oil because it is more acidic than regular crude oil, contains more abrasive particles, and is pumped at higher pressures and temperatures. Despite the increased risk, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration does not require any additional safeguards for a DilBit pipeline.
Safety matters: more than 99 percent of the Keystone XL will be comprised of half-inch-thick steel pipe, the same thickness that failed in the Yellowstone River. But it's not clear that TransCanada is concerned. The company applied for a safety waiver to use even higher pressure in an even thinner pipe, but withdrew the application under public pressure. TransCanada already has one tar sands pipeline in operation, Keystone I, which has leaked 33 times in just its first year of operation.
With the corrosive properties of the DilBit and the less-than-impressive safety record of TransCanada and the rest of the pipeline industry, it is undeniable that spills will happen. TransCanada has yet to produce an analysis of the worst-case spill scenario, as required by the Clean Water Act, so yesterday a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Nebraska, Dr. John Stansbury, released his own analysis to arm decision makers with as much information as possible.
Suffice it to say, Dr. Stansbury's findings show the results of a spill could be catastrophic. A worst-case spill on the Platte River in Nebraska could send a plume of water contaminated with carcinogenic benzene as far south as Kansas City, Missouri, threatening the drinking water of hundreds of thousands of people. Literally millions of gallons of oil could spill into the fragile ecosystem of Nebraska's Sandhills, which lie atop the Ogallala Aquifer, a source of drinking water to more than two million people. TransCanada admits that a small leak could go undetected for up to 90 days, and even a large leak in a remote area could go undetected for up to two weeks, the interval between regular aircraft inspections.
Even still, the company has consistently downplayed the potential damages. TransCanada claims it would shut down the pipeline within 11.5 minutes of a spill, but ExxonMobil needed an hour and Enbridge needed twelve hours to shut down their pipelines. TransCanada's spill assessment assumed that the construction of the Keystone XL would be so much better than other pipelines that it would rupture half as often -- Keystone I's dismal record does not back up the assumption. Also, TransCanada's methodology for predicting spills simply ignores historical data on spills with unknown causes, which account for nearly a quarter of recorded spills. In Dr. Stansbury's independent assessment, the Keystone XL is nearly nine times more likely to experience a significant spill than TransCanada claims.
So what's the solution? First, more stringent pipeline regulations that take into account the differences between DilBit and traditional oil are necessary. These stricter rules should also do everything possible to protect the environment -- any oil spilled into a pristine river or source of drinking water is too much.
Second and more importantly, as I said on MSNBC last week, we need to get this country off oil. Increased fuel economy standards and other ways of improving efficiency will be a good first step, but we, as a nation, need to make a concerted effort to move toward renewable sources of energy. There is too much at stake. Our dependence on oil is an ongoing series of disasters -- obvious ones like oil spills, and less tangible, but even more threatening ones like climate change.
And finally, Secretary Clinton and the administration must reject this tar sands oil pipeline. You can take action and tell the administration to stop the Keystone XL pipeline.]]>People or Polluters: Ending Oil Subsidiestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8630332011-05-17T18:02:22-04:002011-07-17T05:12:01-04:00Erich Picahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/erich-pica/
Gas prices are hovering around $4, and are well above that in some areas. However, there are some other, much bigger numbers that also merit attention:
Those massive numbers are the profits -- from just the first quarter of 2011 -- of the five biggest oil companies: ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips. All told, the big five oil companies reported $36 billion in profits for the first quarter of 2011, more than $200,000 every minute, and oil profits have soared in recent years as gas prices have skyrocketed.
Several factors make those record profits possible. Crude oil prices have jumped to around $100 per barrel. The industry is more concerned with cost than safety when building wells, often cutting corners to save money. And each year, the federal government gives about $4 billion to the oil industry to encourage it to do what it would normally do anyway.
Some of these lavish tax loopholes that give the oil industry this money began nearly a century ago, when Congress decided that it would be beneficial for the American economy to encourage the production of a new source of energy. As the industry -- and its lobbying operation -- expanded, so did the handouts. Today, the sector is so rife with giveaways that some companies earn a higher return on investments after taxes than before. What's more, most of the profits oil companies make, and therefore most of the money they receive in tax breaks, doesn't even go to exploration or drilling -- companies spend most of their profits buying their own stock to increase its value.
During the congressional debate about the Energy Policy Act of 2005, a barrel of crude oil sold for about $55. In April of that year, oil-friendly President Bush stated, "We don't need incentives to oil and gas companies to explore. There are plenty of incentives," and in a Senate hearing that November, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked the CEOs of the five largest oil companies whether they agreed with the president. Although all five said that incentives were unnecessary, the Republican-controlled Congress extended the subsidies in the final bill.
Six years later, with oil selling for nearly twice its 2005 price (and six times the $18 per barrel it cost in 1995, when Congress expanded subsidies to encourage offshore drilling), the handouts continue. But now, these same oil companies claim they wouldn't be able to do business without them. A ConocoPhillips press release last week called proposals to end the giveaways "un-American," and CEO James Mulva -- the same CEO who told the Senate that his company did not need incentives six years ago -- stood by the statement at a Senate hearing the next day. The oil industry also says that repealing these subsidies would raise prices at the pump, but oil prices are set by global supply and demand -- direct subsidies just pad companies' profits.
A widespread, bipartisan majority of Americans support ending oil subsidies, but House Speaker John Boehner is apparently opposed to making multinational corporations pay the same effective tax rate as average citizens. Boehner previously argued that the government shouldn't "pick winners" by helping emerging renewable technologies compete. Boehner's support for dirty energy handouts shows that he has apparently already picked the winner and placed his bet: oil across the board.
The whole debate boils down to a series of simple questions: what is the government's role? Who should the government support, people or polluters? Does the government exist to provide a safety net for the disadvantaged or to pad corporate profits?
It is indefensible for our federal government to demolish the social safety net that has made this country the economic and social wonder it has been for the last fifty years, while continuing to hand out more than $200 billion in subsidies to environmentally destructive industries. As income inequality widens and the country struggles with nine percent unemployment, it is no time for the government to end assistance to those who are struggling, particularly when wealthy oil companies have yet to pay their fair share.
In the time it took you to read this article, big oil made more than $800,000. So next time you fork over $4 for a gallon of gas, think about the $4 billion that Congress willingly hands to dirty oil each year. Which is the bigger outrage?
The Senate is set to vote this week on a bill ending billions of dollars worth of oil subsidies. The bill, written by Senator Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), is a good first step toward ending the government's support for polluting industries.
You can take action and tell your senators to support the Menendez bill here.
]]>Don't Jump to Conclusions About Nuclear Reactors: Look at the Facts and Say Notag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8425822011-03-30T14:37:33-04:002011-05-30T05:12:01-04:00Erich Picahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/erich-pica/
Today, more and more Americans are realizing that nuclear power should not have a part to play in the United States' energy future. Nuclear reactors are neither safe nor clean, and they are so economically risky that Wall Street refuses to finance them, forcing the risk onto American taxpayers. It is time to call for an end to this unsafe, poorly regulated and prohibitively expensive technology.
Nuclear proponents' claims that the industry is clean and safe miss the mark. It takes tons of fossil fuels to mine and transport uranium, leading to about 250,000 tons of CO2 each year during a 1,250 MW plant's lifetime. And, studies show that uranium miners in the American Southwest were exposed to radon 220, a radioactive gas, and as many as one in five developed lung cancer. A current proposal by a private company, Virginia Uranium, to mine in Pittsylvania County in southeast Virginia, overturning the Commonwealth's 30-year ban on uranium mining, has drawn opposition from residents downstream who rely on the Roanoke River Basin for drinking water.
It does not take a natural disaster to cause a nuclear crisis, and the United States is no stranger to these dangers. Three Mile Island is only the most famous example. According to a recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, in 2010 alone, mechanical, electrical and human errors caused "near-misses" at reactors in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia. That list only includes events that caused plants to shut down, not "routine" safety concerns like the aging drain pipes at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant that were leaking radioactive tritium into the groundwater. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission allowed Vermont Yankee to continue operating for two weeks while workers searched for the source of the leak.
Possibly even more dangerous than the threats posed by reactors, there is still no way to safely dispose of spent fuel and other nuclear waste, which can remain dangerously radioactive for tens of thousands of years. In an LA Times op-ed last week, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy for National Security and the Environment Robert Alvarez summarized a report he cowrote in 2003, which concluded that a fire in a spent fuel pool could do more damage than the Chernobyl disaster, potentially even leaving an area about half the size of New Jersey permanently uninhabitable. Yet, the NRC tried to ignore the report, and spent fuel pools are still spread across the country, including at Indian Point, just 38 miles from New York City. Although reports are shaky, NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko told Congress that he believed there was no water in one of the spent fuel pools at Fukushima, and it is possible that there have been fires in one or more of the pools there in the past weeks, greatly increasing the possibility that there will be major long-term health effects from the damaged reactor.
Transparency issues haunt the industry and its regulators. In 2007, candidate Obama told a New Hampshire newspaper editorial board that the NRC had "become captive of the industries that it regulates." The cozy relationship can be clearly seen in the license renewal of the Vermont Yankee plant. Despite the tritium leaks and an overwhelming vote in the Vermont State Senate to close the plant, the NRC announced that it would renew Vermont Yankee's operating license for twenty additional years on March 10 -- the day before the earthquake in Japan. The NRC immediately backed off that decision, but then on March 25, just days after announcing a 90-day review of all nuclear plants, it confirmed the license renewal. It's hard to believe that the NRC will seriously review any nuclear plant when it is so willing to rubber stamp a leaking relic like Vermont Yankee.
The only safe nuclear reactor for our planet is 93 million miles away: the sun. Though, however clear and real the safety concerns are here in the U.S. and in Japan, the massive costs and economic risks of new reactor construction are just as daunting.
Wall Street investors, the same financial daredevils who invested so heavily in subprime mortgages, balk at the risks of nuclear reactor construction. Reactors cost billions of dollars and require many years to build, so with the nuclear industry's track record of defaulting on loans, the private sector sees nuclear construction as an unwise investment. As former NRC member Peter Bradford explained, trying to use nuclear power to meet America's energy needs is like using "caviar to fight world hunger." In recent years, trying to make nuclear construction viable in the United States, the federal government has stepped in to fill the financing gap. Subsidies include accident insurance, a production tax credit, accelerated depreciation, and the Title XVII bailout guarantee program, which could provide billions of dollars in bailouts to the riskiest projects.
Friends of the Earth has created a comprehensive factsheet detailing the risks of these preemptive bailouts. In 2007, Michael J. Wallace, then executive vice president of Constellation Energy, told the New York Times that "Without loan guarantees we will not build nuclear power plants." The guarantees work like a parent co-signing on a teenager's first credit card. Like teenagers, companies that build nuclear reactors are terrifyingly likely to default on their loans. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2003 that the risk of default on a nuclear construction loan guarantee is "very high -- well above 50 percent." The Department of Energy charges a nominal fee which is supposed to cover potential losses, but because it makes the federal program more expensive than private sector loans, DOE ends up covering only projects that are too risky to receive private financing. It is not surprising that the Congressional Research Service expects the taxpayers to "bear most of the risk, facing potentially large losses."
A month before the earthquake in Japan, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report on nuclear subsidies, and found that in some cases, "buying power on the open market and giving it away for free would have been less costly than subsidizing the construction and operation of nuclear power plants." The UCS report and Friends of the Earth's own Green Scissors report advocate for doing away with nuclear subsidies entirely.
In the wake of Japan's nuclear crisis, those financial risks became even clearer. Wall Street analysts have downgraded nuclear power companies, increasing the chances that they will need U.S. taxpayers to finance future projects if new reactors are built. Economic considerations alone are enough reason to stop subsidies for new reactors, but with safety and transparency concerns, it is clear that the time has come to end nuclear power in the United States.
I hope you will join me in taking action to phase out nuclear power today.]]>The Curious Case of Fred Uptontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8174662011-02-02T18:15:45-05:002011-05-25T18:30:24-04:00Erich Picahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/erich-pica/
He's the coworker who was your friend until he got promoted and "went corporate." He's the athlete who played to bring a championship to his home town before following a larger contract to a bigger city. He's the buddy who was always around until he got into a relationship and didn't have time for you any more.
Fred Upton is the Republican congressman who used to have interesting ideas about reducing emissions and fighting climate change. But then he ran for chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Now, he has staffed his committee with lobbyists and today he is introducing a bill that seeks to roll back Clean Air Act protections against pollution from factories and power plants.
Considering that it's practically a Republican Party plank these days, it should not be surprising that Upton is denying climate change. But his turnaround on the issue was so complete and extreme that even Fox News questioned him. Why would a respectable congressman completely contradict his earlier positions and ignore the concerns of his constituents, the people affected by the Kalamazoo River Oil Spill last year? One explanation might be that in January, after taking the gavel, Uptonhandedhis committeeover tolobbyists. It is terrifying to see such blatant corporate influence over such an important part of our government.
By listening to the dirty oil and coal industries instead of his constituents, Chairman Upton has lost touch with his district. I grew up in Bainbridge Township, outside of Benton Harbor, right across the river from the congressman's home town of St. Joseph. Before I moved to Washington, D.C., Upton was my representative, and, like everyone in the district, I called him Fred.
The people of Southwest Michigan are proud Midwesterners. We know our core values, and whether we vote for Republicans or Democrats, those core values guide us. For the first twenty years Fred served in the House, he was the same way. He stuck by his principles, working hard to prevent dangerous and ecologically destructive drilling in Lake Michigan and supporting the innovations made by Whirlpool, a company Upton's grandfather helped start that is still based in his district, by increasing energy efficiency requirements. The first time I voted in a congressional election, I voted for Fred, and for 20 years, I respected him.
But in the last two years, Upton has abandoned his principles. He now supports a pipeline that will double imports of the same filthy tar sands oil that contaminated the Kalamazoo River, which empties into Upton's beloved Lake Michigan, just last year. And the bill he is introducing today to block modest limits on carbon dioxide pollution is a clear giveaway to corporate lobbyists that will cause serious health problems for thousands of people around the country. Upton has lost the independent compass that guided him through earlier terms and earned him respect, even from those who did not support him. By abandoning the common-sense governing that got him to where he is, he has turned his back on that respect. By relying on lobbyists to run his committee, he has lost touch with the community.
I know many people who live in Michigan's Sixth District. They care about the air and water. They want to have the ear of their representative in Washington. And they are too smart to let Fred abandon them. If Congressman Upton continues his rightward shift, he will lose the support of the independents who have supported him for the last twenty five years. Progress Michigan has already launched an online petition urging Upton to "start working for Michigan, not special interests!" If he continues to attack policies that protect the people of Michigan, he could ensure that this term is his last.
Fred Upton was the conscientious congressman from my hometown, but now he's selling out his district to buy more influence. It's a shame.]]>3 Environmental Reforms Obama Should Call for Tonighttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8137482011-01-25T14:50:51-05:002011-05-25T18:25:24-04:00Erich Picahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/erich-pica/
In his State of the Union address last year, President Obama failed to support strong policies to help the country avoid ecological disaster. Tonight, he cannot afford to make the same mistake. The government must play a substantial role in protecting ecosystems and the people who depend on them - strong regulations are crucial, and the President must make this point. By setting out three simple steps, the President can chart a new course forward into an environmentally sound and economically competitive 21st century. We urge President Obama to rededicate his administration to protecting our planet and the people who live on it, while making the United States a global leader in energy innovation.
1. Renew his call for an end to fossil fuel subsidies
When socially beneficial industries need help getting off the ground, the federal government can use tax incentives and special subsidies to encourage investment. But the fossil fuel industry is established, is raking in record profits, and is harming the environment, so there's no reason for taxpayers to continue to subsidize coal and oil companies - foreign and domestic - to the tune of billions of dollars a year. These giveaways come in many forms: loan guarantees, tax loopholes, undervalued or unenforced royalty fees for drilling on public land, liability coverage and even direct handouts. Such Polluter Perks need to end.
Many of the new members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, were elected promising to cut deficit spending and eliminate the national debt. Eliminating dirty fuel subsidies and other environmentally harmful spending could cut $200 billion from the budget. The American people need this money more than the oil companies do; in the first quarter of 2010, the quarter immediately before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, BP made $61 million per day in profits, and was only the third highest-earning oil company during that time. Surely those profits are high enough to be self-sustaining without being propped up by taxpayers.
Many fossil fuel subsidies were designed at the turn of the 20th century to help an emerging industry develop. Now, taxpayer money works to further entrench a dangerous behemoth, rewarding dirty energy producers for destroying the natural environment. The newly emerging clean energy industry today needs the support that oil received a century ago (and unfortunately continues to receive). Eliminating fossil fuel subsidies will remove a roadblock preventing the emergence of clean, renewable energy sources; rededicating the money to support renewables will foster innovation that could have an incredibly positive impact on the nation's energy future, and its economy.
President Obama proposed eliminating fossil fuel subsidies at the G20 conference in 2009 but has made little progress since. Tonight's speech is a perfect opportunity for the President to reiterate that pledge and propose the complete elimination of fossil fuel subsidies. He can use the State of the Union address to explain how the subsidies hurt the economy and how their elimination will spur growth in renewable energy, cut greenhouse gas emissions and reduce the budget deficit.
2. Stand up for the Clean Air Act and effective regulations
The Clean Air Act has been an important force protecting Americans since it was enacted nearly a half century ago. The Clean Air Act has reduced air pollution across the country, cutting asthma and lung disease rates and saving countless lives. In 2007, the Supreme Court confirmedobligated that the EPA is obligated to use the Clean Air Act to regulate the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Since President Obama took office, his administration has used this law to take modest steps to increase fuel standards for cars and ensure that new factories and power plants do not belch toxic gases into the atmosphere.
However, even these initial steps are under fire from the global warming deniers in Congress. A background paper prepared for the House Environment and Commerce Committee [PDF] claims that "the [EPA] has been regulating 'too much too fast.'" The new rules - which apply only to new plants and those being upgraded and will barely reduce emissions by five percent according to some sources - are closer to "too little too late" than to what the Republicans claim. These protections cannot wait; only a significant cut in emissions can prevent catastrophic damage to the planet and the EPA must use every tool in its power to stop irreparable damage.
Unfortunately, the assault on the Clean Air Act fits into a broader pattern. Wealthy corporate interests have been working to turn "regulation" into a dirty word, even though regulations are essential to the strength of our economy and the well being of the public. This isn't an abstract debate. We've seen in the past what happens without sufficient regulation: kids die when they eat contaminated food, rivers catch on fire, giant oil spills take human life and destroy ecosystems, corporations discriminate against and mistreat their employees, and financial institutions engage in behavior so risky that it crashes the economy. The truth is that in order for markets and society to function, we need regulations.
Tonight, President Obama must defend regulations in general and stand up for the Clean Air Act in particular. After the speech, he should redouble his push to use his regulatory authority to protect the environment.
3. Support clean energy, but not the misleadingly named "Clean Electricity Standard"
Congress cannot afford to avoid making real change; it cannot continue to "greenwash" bad ideas. Simply calling coal, offshore oil, biofuels and nuclear power "clean," like President Obama did in his State of the Union last year does not eliminate their devastating environmental impacts. The American Power Act introduced in the Senate last session would also have avoided the real issue by propping up the same failed technologies into the next several decades. The energy companies that supported the bill were disappointed to see it stay in committee at the end of the session.
Natural, renewable power sources -- including wind, solar, and geothermal -- are legitimately clean alternatives, producing virtually no harmful byproducts. Moreover, technology to harness energy from these sources exists and is safe. As the country creates more clean, renewable energy, thousands of high-paying jobs will be created in fields from engineering to manufacturing. Effective investments and regulations will help expand the clean energy industry, while strengthening our nation's economy.
However, the President must not support a dangerous bait-and-switch: the misleadingly named "Clean Electricity Standard," which includes many energy sources that are not clean, such as dangerous nuclear, dirty coal, and unsustainable biomass. If the President pretends that these sources are clean and announces his support for the Clean Electricity Standard, he will be playing politics, not supporting truly clean energy.
We have seen before what our country can do when we work together toward a common goal. This month, we reflect on the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of President Kennedy, a man who dared a nation to go to the moon. President Obama faces a similar moment closer to home. Now is not the time to aim low, or to engage in petty politics designed to keep corporate lobbyists happy. Bold policies that truly promote clean energy are needed. If President Obama issues this challenge, the nation will listen.
]]>Is Obama Worse Than Bush on International Climate?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7899152010-11-30T14:03:07-05:002011-05-25T18:15:22-04:00Erich Picahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/erich-pica/Delegates from around the world are gathering in Cancun for international climate negotiations this week and next, and a storyline is developing that might surprise many Americans.
President Obama has done a better job than his predecessor at addressing climate change at the domestic level (though Obama's efforts have still underwhelmed). But at the international level, the Obama administration's posturing has become so retrogressive that it now forces this question: Is President Obama doing even worse than President Bush at addressing climate change on the international stage?
President Bush did not rise to the challenge of cooperating with other countries to respond to climate change; his administration largely dismissed the climate crisis -- and, when it finally decided to engage in international negotiations, it refused to commit the United States to doing its fair share of the work to solve the problem. (The U.S. has pumped more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere than any other country, so it has a responsibility to lead the way to solutions.)
President Obama has more assertively engaged the U.S. in international negotiations. But instead of doing so in a way that might lead to a strong and fair climate agreement, his administration is seeking to undermine the existing international climate regime and replace it with something fundamentally and dangerously weaker. If President Obama doesn't reverse course in Cancun, his predecessor's approach may turn out to have done less harm than his own.
The Backstory
From 2001-2006, President Bush refused to engage in international climate negotiations in a serious way. He questioned climate science, made it known that the U.S. was fundamentally opposed to the Kyoto Protocol (which contains the only legally binding greenhouse gas emissions reduction requirements for developed countries), and left it at that.
But in 2007, President Bush began to change his tune. "In recent years, science has deepened our understanding of climate change and opened new possibilities for confronting it," he said. "The United States takes this issue seriously."
That year, the Bush administration participated in a UN climate negotiating session in Bali, Indonesia, and helped to produce the "Bali Roadmap." Because the U.S. had made it clear that it wouldn't ratify the Kyoto Protocol, other countries used the Bali Roadmap to carve out a special space separate from Kyoto in which the United States could make its own emissions reduction commitment.
Fast forward to just after the presidential election in 2008. In late November 2008, President-elect Obama sent a taped message to the attendees of a climate summit hosted by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. "Once I take office," Obama told attendees, "you can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change."
Two months later, delivering his inaugural address, President Obama warned "those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty" that they could no longer "consume the world's resources without regard to effect."
"The world has changed, and we must change with it," Obama said.
But instead of following through on this lofty rhetoric by providing climate leadership, the Obama administration stalled for time in the negotiations, telling the rest of the world it had to wait for Congress to act. In Copenhagen, U.S. negotiators urged countries to unite around a nonbinding "political" climate agreement with voluntary emissions reductions far weaker than what science and equity indicate are needed. Crucially, the new paradigm the U.S. proposed would lack aggregate global emissions reduction targets, and would instead allow each country to reduce its emissions however much it liked, without respect to what overall global emissions would then total.
After two weeks of negotiations in Copenhagen in which the U.S. and other developed countries blocked progress by shirking strong commitments to action, a last-minute, closed-door push by President Obama led a number of influential countries to agree to sign the Copenhagen Accord, which advanced the new paradigm supported by the U.S. After the Accord's existence was announced, a firestorm ensued, with many delegations upset that the Accord had been developed via a process that excluded many countries that could be harmed by climate change, and that the Accord did not reflect the demands of science or justice. After pulling an all-nighter to continue negotiations, delegates finally voted to "note" the existence of the Accord without adopting it.
Worse Than Bush?
As another round of negotiations begins this week, this time in Cancun, the Obama administration is seeking to undermine the Bali Action Plan to which the Bush administration agreed.
President Obama's lead climate negotiators, Todd Stern and Jonathan Pershing, are taking a "my way or the highway" approach to the negotiations, insisting that the only way forward is if other countries agree to the Copenhagen Accord. The U.S. claims not to take a position on the Kyoto Protocol, but the "pledge-based" approach it has promoted in the Accord is, in practice, an attempt to replace the Protocol with a far weaker substitute.
This is particularly problematic because the first period of emission reduction commitments under the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012. By continuing to promote an agreement based on the Accord, and dismissing the importance of aggregate emissions reduction commitments, President Obama's representatives are undermining the efforts of other countries to move forward with a second commitment period. What this means is that most countries that currently face legally binding limits on emissions could see those limits disappear in 2012.
The U.S. has used bullying tactics to push its approach at the negotiations. U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern has threatened to block the creation of a global climate fund, which would deliver climate assistance to poor countries, unless major developing countries make more concessions. At the same time that the U.S. is offering to do far less than its fair share to address this problem, it is threatening to hold hostage funding that poor and vulnerable countries require to combat the impacts of climate change, which in some cases threaten their very survival.
This stands in contrast to the approach pursued by President Bush, who signaled by agreeing to the Bali Roadmap that the U.S. was content to leave the Kyoto Protocol intact. In this way, President Obama is actually doing more than President Bush did to hinder progress at the international level -- his administration is in effect leading a race to the bottom on emissions reduction commitments, and at the same time it is fomenting conflict between developed and developing countries over the delivery of climate funding.
To be sure, the Obama administration has done a better job of responding to climate change at the domestic level. President Obama has supported the Clean Air Act and his EPA is moving to use this law to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, which the Bush administration refused to do. President Obama was also a key supporter of incentives for clean energy in the Recovery Act: a commitment of $150 billion over the next 10 years to boost the wind, solar, and geothermal industries (as well as hydropower and bioenergy, which aren't so clean). This is more than was ever delivered in such a short period by President Bush.*
But being better than Bush at the domestic level is a very low threshold by which to measure President Obama. The climate crisis is a global one; it can't be solved solely by action at the domestic level, and it requires a commitment to constructive international engagement. Progress in the UN negotiations is sorely needed. The Obama administration must stop hindering that progress.
How the Obama Administration Can Redeem Itself
The negotiations taking place this week and the next offer the Obama administration an opportunity to get back on the right track.
First, the Obama administration must support the establishment of a global emissions reduction target based on science. The administration must stop trying to drag the rest of the world down to its very low level of ambition when it comes to emissions reductions, as the climate crisis demands far higher, not lower, ambition from all developed countries.
In addition, the administration must not block the establishment of a global climate fund. The administration must support putting this fund under the authority of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change -- not the World Bank.
The U.S. should also follow through on and increase its pledges to deliver funds to support poorer countries as they develop cleaner economies and respond to climate change impacts. At previous climate talks, the provision of such funds has been used as a bargaining chip by the U.S. to force other countries to do its bidding. But this funding shouldn't be spun as an act of generosity on the part of the U.S.; rather, it is the repayment of an existing obligation. As the largest historic polluter of greenhouse gases, the U.S. bears a "climate debt": The U.S. owes money to developing countries faced with climate change impacts because it has filled more than its fair share of the atmosphere with climate-warming pollution.
The climate negotiations in Cancun mean it's decision time for President Obama. Will he contribute constructively to the international negotiations, or will he continue down the current path and end up worse than Bush?
* President Obama has done some great things, but at the same time, let's not give him too much credit for his work at the domestic level. Sure he's better than Bush was, but that's an awfully low bar. President Obama backed a deeply flawed legislative strategy that had Democrats throwing giveaway after giveaway to polluting industries in exchange for a cap-and-trade bill that was so riddled with loopholes it would have accomplished little but enrich Wall Street. President Obama also used his 2010 State of the Union address to call offshore oil drilling, nuclear reactors, and coal "clean." And President Obama put so much pressure on the U.S. Export-Import Bank (a federal institution) to reverse its decision not to finance a massive coal plant in India that the Bank ended up caving, sending fossil fuel subsidies flowing out of the U.S.]]>Time to Stop Subsidizing Ethanoltag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7837782010-11-15T15:03:13-05:002011-05-25T18:10:25-04:00Erich Picahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/erich-pica/Why Congress should let a major biofuels tax credit expire this year
Though its name may be little-known, the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC) is not a little subsidy: taxpayers pay more than $5 billion (a number that's increasing) to oil and gas conglomerates like ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil to blend ethanol with gasoline each year.
But it's not just environmentalists or food sovereignty campaigners who are concerned about this giant taxpayer giveaway. Good government advocates who oppose wasteful spending are at the fore of the fight to repeal ethanol subsidies, and for good reason. The $5 billion VEETC subsidy pads the pockets of Big Oil, but does almost nothing to advance its stated purpose of actually promoting ethanol production.
While this subsidy boondoggle is due to expire in less than two months, the ethanol industry and its congressional cronies have been pushing for its extension. However, given that several members of Congress with a history of backing dirty ethanol have lost their re-election bids, including Reps. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (D-SD) and Earl Pomeroy (D-ND), Congress has the opportunity to save taxpayers billions of dollars and advance smart policy by ending this giveaway. As the legislative conversation quickly moves to what the 112th Congress will do (or not do), the lame duck session (between now and January, when the new Congress is sworn in) looks to be turning into the last chance to pass this bad legislation. The ethanol lobby is responding, stepping up its game by running ads, making new hires and attempting to cash in on the investments they've made into the congresspersons that they've supported over the last few election cycles -- especially those representatives who didn't win re-election --in order to extend subsidies for corn ethanol.
Earlier in the year, Blue Dog and member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee Rep. Earl Pomeroy championed the extension of the tax subsidy for five years. The cost of this proposal would have been well over $30 billion dollars to corn ethanol alone. According to conversations that Friends of the Earth's biofuels campaign coordinator, Kate McMahon, had with congressional staff, Pomeroy made the case to his Democratic colleagues that he needed to extend this credit in order to win re-election. Despite indications from his colleagues on Ways and Means that they would support extension of this credit -- and the vast amount of money he was able to garner from the biofuels industry as a result of his pro-ethanol stance -- it is clear that Pomeroy's election hung on much more than the credit. Pomeroy lost by a 10 percent margin. Now, with the elections over, the question remains: will Congress extend this credit or allow it to expire?
There are many reasons Congress should choose expiration. The tax credit is completely unnecessary. VEETC was established in 2004 as a payment to gasoline refiners to motivate them to purchase and blend ethanol into the gas supply. However, because of an ethanol use mandate set out by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and expanded in the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007, oil companies are now required to blend ethanol into the gas supply. The mandate thus eliminates the reason to incentivize ethanol blending through subsidies. The result is that in effect, taxpayers have spent more than $20 billion in the past five years to pay refineries to do something they are already required to do.
Recent studies by the Congressional Budget Office and Iowa State University conclude that the mandate alone is sufficient to increase ethanol production. The reality is that instead of increasing ethanol production, VEETC increases the ethanol industry's profit margins by encouraging oil companies to buy slightly more ethanol at higher prices. Any claim that VEETC has a substantial impact on ethanol production and blending is false. Oil companies agree. Valero Energy Corporation and ExxonMobil -- two of the largest U.S. oil refiners -- have publicly said that they neither need nor want VEETC. Irrespective of the credit, they'll purchase and sell the amount of ethanol that they're required to under the mandate.
Last month, seeing the writing on the wall for their doomed subsidy, ethanol industry groups, including the Renewable Fuels Association, American Coalition for Corn Ethanol, Growth Energy, and National Corn Growers Association, introduced a proposal that they claimed represents a "turning point." But in reality, it was more of the same: waste billions of taxpayer dollars on a mature industry that needs no further subsidization.
Not only does their plan call for extending VEETC through 2011 at 36 cents a gallon, it guarantees that taxpayers will continue to foot the bill to subsidize dirty ethanol for an additional four years via a "producers' credit." The 36 cent rate represents a reduction from the current rate of 45 cents per gallon, but even with the reduction the tax credit would still cost taxpayers at least $4.7 billion next year. There are better ways to spend this money. However, considering that many lawmakers have been critical of VEETC, which will cost more than $5.6 billion this year alone, and have called for a reduction and complete phase-out of VEETC, this proposal doesn't seem as revolutionary as the industry would have you believe. While VEETC is currently paid to gas and oil companies that blend ethanol into the gas supply, redirecting the payments to ethanol producers would not make the tax credit any less of a boondoggle: ethanol consumption would still be required by the mandate, making subsidizing the fuel redundant and wasteful, regardless of to whom the subsidy is paid.
At the end of the day, ethanol subsidies are little more than a taxpayer giveaway to big oil companies that also slightly increase the profits of a handful of agribusiness corporations -- corporations whose practices contribute to a wide array of social and environmental problems, such as water pollution, ecosystem destruction and degradation, hunger, and land inequity. Industrial biofuels like the corn ethanol subsidized in the U.S. today are no exception. Let's stop giving destructive industries -- fossil fuels and biofuels alike -- billions of taxpayer dollars. Let's end VEETC this year.
]]>President Obama: Fired Up for Clean Energy or Dirty Coal?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7540962010-10-07T11:18:31-04:002011-05-25T17:55:20-04:00Erich Picahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/erich-pica/
This symbolic gesture is a big deal. We need a climate and clean energy communicator-in-chief -- and by installing solar on the most prestigious house in our country, the president signals a new level of commitment to filling that role.
The president's move also demonstrates the power of our collective action to make a political impact. 350.org made provoking world leaders to put solar on their homes a goal of the 10/10/10 Global Climate Work Party. With more than 6,300 events planned in 187 countries, this Sunday will be the largest day of action for climate solutions the world has ever seen -- and the timing of the White House solar announcement couldn't have been a coincidence. (Click here to find and sign up for an event on Sunday.)
Bill McKibben summed up the significance in this post from Tuesday:
Would we rather have comprehensive climate legislation? We would -- which is why, on Sunday, people will put down their hammers and shovels, pick up their cellphones, and in all those countries call their presidents, prime ministers, Politburos to say: 'I'm getting to work, what about you?'
And when they call the White House, they'll be able to add: 'Thanks for making a real start.'
As we celebrate this real start on Sunday, we'll of course be pushing President Obama to take his nascent clean energy leadership to the next level -- and really fire up everyone hungry for leadership.
The next step is for the Obama administration to move beyond symbolism. A key area for improvement is the Obama administration's posture and policies toward coal. Coal is one of the most important fronts in the fight against climate change and for healthy communities. Unfortunately, instead of standing up to the coal industry, the Obama administration has too often enabled its dirty pollution, accounting for about 30 percent of climate-warming emissions in the U.S., to persist. Here are three opportunities for President Obama to reverse and redeem his track record.
Ending mountaintop removal
Mountaintop removal is an extreme form of mining in which coal companies demolish the tops of mountains in Appalachia (destroying acres of forest that are among the most diverse in the world) and bury surrounding rivers and valleys that sustain ecosystems and provide drinking water to communities.
In April 2010, President Obama's EPA released tough new guidelines for reviewing mountaintop removal permits. However, its first decision under them gave the green light to Arch Coal to bury three more valleys in Logan County, West Virginia.
On September 27, more than 1,000 citizens from Appalachia and across the country converged in Washington, D.C. to demand that the Obama administration abolish mountaintop removal altogether. Protesters marched past the EPA to the White House holding signs and sharing stories that testified to the devastating impacts that mountaintop removal inflicts on their health and communities. More than 100 citizens, including world-renowned climate scientist Dr. James Hansen, were arrested engaging in a non-violent sit-in in front of the White House.
In the coming months, the EPA will decide whether to veto a permit for one of the largest mountaintop removal projects ever proposed, the Spruce No. 1 Mine in West Virginia, which would destroy more than 2,000 acres. The Spruce Mine decision will signal whether or not the Obama administration is serious about halting one of our nation's worst environmental crimes.
Protecting communities from toxic coal ash waste
The EPA is also considering the first-ever federal regulations to address coal ash, a highly toxic solid waste produced by American coal plants to the tune of 150 million tons each year. The dumps where much of this waste is stored routinely leach cancer-causing toxins into streams and drinking water. In December 2008, a small town in eastern Tennessee was devastated when a nearby coal ash storage pond ruptured, covering 300 acres in toxic sludge.
Even though the EPA's own data show that drinking water contaminated by coal ash is more dangerous than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, the agency has left the door open for regulations that would essentially maintain the toxic status quo.
White House interference is to blame. The EPA originally proposed classifying coal ash as hazardous and setting strong, federally enforceable standards for its disposal. However, after sending its proposal to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for review, the EPA changed course. In May 2010, it released two regulatory options for public review -- one that is stringent and another that would leave coal ash virtually uncontrolled. The EPA is taking public comments until November 30, 2010 and will then make a final decision. If the Obama administration is committed to defending public health, it must choose the stronger option.
Keeping our tax dollars out of the coal industry's coffers
The Obama administration's reluctance to stand up to the coal industry has not only been evident in EPA decisions, but also in its use of our tax dollars.
The Obama administration directed $3.8 billion in stimulus funds to carbon capture and storage (CCS), a unicorn technology that has virtually no potential to deliver substantial cuts in climate-warming emissions.
President Obama is also misleading the public by claiming that CCS technology is a way toward "clean" coal. This is a dangerous misnomer. Coal-fired power plants that use CCS would still require coal to be mined, produce toxic coal ash waste, and belch other pollutants into the air. And carbon that is captured and "sequestered" underground also creates environmental risks. If an underground deposit of carbon dioxide were suddenly to leak (as happened with a natural carbon dioxide deposit in Cameroon that killed 1,200 people in 1986) people living and working nearby could suffocate.
Two additional decisions on taxpayer support for dirty coal are looming: The Obama administration must decide whether to fund the world's most polluting coal plant in Kusile, South Africa via a U.S. Export-Import Bank loan and whether to issue a loan guarantee to help build the country's first-ever liquid coal plant in Wyoming.
President Obama must stop supporting subsidies for CCS and other dirty coal projects, and cease falsely claiming that coal can be clean.
A way forward
By cracking down on the coal industry's devastating pollution, President Obama has an opportunity to really energize activists and community leaders across the country hungry for real climate leadership. White House manipulation of the EPA, his administration's counterproductive use of tax dollars to fund dirty coal projects, and his misleading "clean coal" rhetoric can all change -- and they must. Human health in coal-impacted communities and our success in preventing the worst impacts of climate change depend on it.
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Recent media and regulator scrutiny has catalogued the many systemic problems that plagued the Kalamazoo pipeline disaster and the ensuing cleanup. The most striking problem was the assumption of what was truly being pumped through the pipeline. When first responders arrived on the scene, they thought the six-and-a-half foot tear in the ruptured pipeline 6B was oozing conventional crude. But the pipeline was spilling tar sands oil, a toxic, corrosive substance that acts more like tar than oil in water. 
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Though its name may be little-known, the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC) is not a little subsidy: taxpayers pay more than $5 billion (a number that's increasing) to oil and gas conglomerates like ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil to blend ethanol with gasoline each year.
In April 2010, President Obama's EPA released tough new guidelines for reviewing mountaintop removal permits. However, its first decision under them gave the green light to Arch Coal to bury three more valleys in Logan County, West Virginia.