Mumbai, Miami on list for big weather disasters

Associated Press
March 27, 2012

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• FILE - This Nov. 24, 2007 file …

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  FILE - In this July 18, 2008 file …

WASHINGTON (AP) — Global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts and heat waves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of deadly and costly weather disasters, an international panel of climate scientists says in a report issued Wednesday.

The greatest danger from extreme weather is in highly populated, poor regions of the world, the report warns, but no corner of the globe — from Mumbai to Miami — is immune. The document by a Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists forecasts stronger tropical cyclones and more frequent heat waves, deluges and droughts.

The 594-page report blames the scale of recent and future disasters on a combination of man-made climate change, population shifts and poverty.

In the past, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, founded in 1988 by the United Nations, has focused on the slow inexorable rise of temperatures and oceans as part of global warming. This report by the panel is the first to look at the less common but far more noticeable extreme weather changes, which recently have been costing on average about $80 billion a year in damage.

"We mostly experience weather and climate through the extreme," said Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, who is one of the report's top editors. "That's where we have the losses. That's where we have the insurance payments. That's where things have the potential to fall apart.

"There are lots of places that are already marginal for one reason or another," Field said. But it's not just poor areas: "There is disaster risk almost everywhere."

The scientists say that some places, particularly parts of Mumbai in India, could become uninhabitable from floods, storms and rising seas. In 2005, over 24 hours nearly 3 feet of rain fell on the city, killing more than 1,000 people and causing massive damage. Roughly 2.7 million people live in areas at risk of flooding.

Other cities at lesser risk include Miami, Shanghai, Bangkok, China's Guangzhou, Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City, Myanmar's Yangon (formerly known as Rangoon) and India's Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta). The people of small island nations, such as the Maldives, may also need to abandon their homes because of rising seas and fierce storms.

"The decision about whether or not to move is achingly difficult and I think it's one that the world community will have to face with increasing frequency in the future," Field said in a telephone news conference Wednesday.

This report — the summary of which was issued in November — is unique because it emphasizes managing risks and how taking precautions can work, Field said. In fact, the panel's report uses the word "risk" 4,387 times.

Field pointed to storm-and-flood-prone Bangladesh, an impoverished country that has learned from its past disasters. In 1970, a Category 3 tropical cyclone named Bhola killed more than 300,000 people. In 2007, a stronger cyclone killed only 4,200 people. Despite the loss of life, the country is considered a success story because it was better prepared and invested in warning and disaster prevention, Field said.

A country that was not as prepared, Myanmar, was hit with a similar sized storm in 2008, which killed 138,000 people.

The study says forecasts that some tropical cyclones — which includes hurricanes in the United States — will be stronger because of global warming, but the number of storms should not increase and may drop slightly.

Some other specific changes in severe weather that the scientists said they had the most confidence in predicting include more heat waves and record hot temperatures worldwide, increased downpours in Alaska, Canada, northern and central Europe, East Africa and north Asia,

IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri told The Associated Press that while all countries are getting hurt by increased climate extremes, the overwhelming majority of deaths are happening in poorer less developed places. That, combined with the fact that richer countries are generating more greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels, makes the issue of weather extremes one of fairness.

However, extremes aren't always deadly. Sometimes, they are just strange.

Study co-author David Easterling of the National Climatic Data Center says this month's heat wave, while not deadly, fits the pattern of worsening extremes. The U.S. has set nearly 6,800 high temperature records in March. Last year, the United States set a record for billion-dollar weather disasters, though many were tornadoes, which can't be linked to global warming.

"When you start putting all these events together, the insurance claims, it's just amazing," Easterling said. "It's pretty hard to deny the fact that there's got to be some climate signal."

Northeastern University engineering and environment professor Auroop Ganguly, who didn't take part in writing the IPCC report, praised it and said the extreme weather it highlights "is one of the major and important types of what we would call 'global weirding.'" It's a phrase that some experts have been starting to use more to describe climate extremes.

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Online:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: http://www.ipcc.ch

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After failing to reach goals, California attempts to jump-start its 'Hydrogen Highway'

Contra Costa Times
March 25, 2012

Eight years ago, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger drove a hydrogen-powered Toyota Highlander to UC Davis and, with TV cameras running, promised to build a "hydrogen highway" to help usher in a green revolution in California.

Schwarzenegger signed a plan to build 50 to 100 hydrogen fueling stations by 2010 with state funds and money from oil companies. The plan was mostly hype: Schwarzenegger had announced it without having any binding agreements from oil companies -- and they backed out. Today, only six hydrogen fueling stations statewide are open to the public.

But now, with less fanfare, Gov. Jerry Brown's administration is trying to jump-start the whole effort with a new strategy: forcing oil companies to build the hydrogen stations.

The new approach has environmentalists cheering and Big Oil threatening to sue. And the fate of hydrogen-powered vehicles in California, and likely the entire United States, hangs in the balance.

"The original partnership was a one-sided partnership," said Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board. "The oil companies refused to put up their share. You can't have a partnership with only one side."

In January, the powerful air resources board passed a sweeping set of new "advanced clean car rules" that drew international attention. The rules require automakers to reduce smog-forming emissions 75 percent by 2025 for new cars sold in California. They also require automakers to

sell 1.4 million electric, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen vehicles by 2025 -- 15 percent of all new cars sold in California that year -- or face steep penalties.

'Meat on the bones'

The auto industry endorsed the rules, ending years of legal battles. But buried in the fine print was another plan, one that mandates the state's biggest oil companies to build hydrogen fueling stations once the car companies sign binding commitments to build 10,000 hydrogen-powered vehicles for sale in California.

"We tried to put some meat on the bones," Nichols said. "We told the people who have a monopoly on our transportation fuels that they have to provide some of the fuels we need for this new generation of cars."

The automakers are now saying they can hit the 10,000 target by 2015. They have until August to commit to that goal -- and will face fines if they don't meet it.

The oil companies, meanwhile, are in open revolt.

"Our members support diversifying our energy portfolio, but doing so in ways that are consistent with consumer expectations, sound science and market demand -- not government mandates," said Tupper Hull, a spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Association, an industry trade group.

Large oil companies would be required to build roughly 20 hydrogen fueling stations, at a cost of about $2 million each, every time the auto companies commit to putting 10,000 hydrogen vehicles for sale in any one region.

The first region is expected to be the Los Angeles area, where all six existing hydrogen stations are operating. Although a handful of stations are expected to open in the Bay Area -- one at AC Transit in Emeryville this year and one at San Francisco International Airport in 2013 -- the Bay Area probably won't have a significant number for five years or more. Eventually, hundreds of stations could be required statewide.

The petroleum association claims the state is overstepping its authority and illegally taking private property. Oil companies also insist that they simply don't want to be in the hydrogen business.

In a recent letter to the air board, John Braeutigam, vice president for strategic development of Valero, said the rule would force refiners to "directly compete with their own core business." He added: "As the nation's largest independent refiner, and second-largest producer of corn ethanol, Valero objects to being forced to fund its own demise."

Nichols and environmental groups say California needs to continue to lead the U.S. in reducing smog, greenhouse gases and reliance on foreign oil. They note that although electric car sales are finally taking off with the Nissan Leaf and other models, hydrogen vehicles have more range. The Honda Clarity, for example, which 25 people in Southern California are leasing for $600 a month in a trial program, goes 240 miles on a full tank of hydrogen, at a cost per mile roughly the same as gasoline.

"This is about providing California a future beyond gasoline," said Simon Mui, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Although Shell and Chevron did some limited hydrogen work, Schwarzenegger's original plan failed to meet its goals because oil companies decided they didn't want to partner with the state to build stations. In addition, Democrats in the Legislature approved only half the $50 million in planned funding to help build them, then put strict new standards on the stations, raising costs by requiring that one-third of their electricity come from renewable sources. Then, President Obama slashed federal spending on hydrogen programs, cutting it in half from the levels under the Bush administration.

Lack of demand

Air board officials now predict 50 stations will be open statewide by 2016. The one that will be run by AC Transit in Emeryville is a $10 million project funded by state and federal grants and maintained by Linde, a German gas company. It already powers 12 hydrogen buses and will soon be open to the public.

As recently as 2008, there were 24 hydrogen stations in California. But many closed because of the lack of demand and changing technology.

And the UC Davis station where Schwarzenegger launched the whole "hydrogen highway" idea?

It's also shuttered.

Despite the stumbles, supporters of hydrogen vehicles note that all the major auto companies have now committed to building them in the next five years. And once the stations are there, the supporters say, cars powered by hydrogen will finally take off.

"It's never been done before," said Steve Ellis, a spokesman for Honda. "You learn as you go. It's a slow collaborative process that takes time. But with each success, you build on it -- and it gets better."

“Save The Plastic Bag Coalition” Fights Against Banning Plastic Bags in SF

Triple Pundit
March 22, 2012
If you thought the debate over the impact of plastic bags is one debate we're already done with, you got it wrong. It's far from being over thanks to Save The Plastic Bag Coalition, an organization that "is questioning and challenging the misinformation, myths, exaggerations, and hype spread by anti-plastic bag activists". The coalition filed a suit earlier this month against the city of San Francisco, which expanded in February its 2007 ban on bags to include the use of single-use plastic bags at all businesses, including restaurants.

The coalition's main legal argument was that the city didn't conduct an environmental impact report (EIR) before enacting the measure, hence violating the California Environmental Control Act.

Besides the legal issue, they're trying to prove two points: First, "paper and compostable bags are significantly worse for the environment than plastic bags." Second, the 10-cent fee that the city wants businesses to charge for a paper or compostable carryout bag "is, or may be, far too low to act as an effective incentive to promote the use of reusable bags." And so, the plastic or paper debate is back in full swing.

First, it is interesting to check out who this coalition with the interesting name, Save The Plastic Bag, actually is. According to their website, the coalition was formed in June 2008 with the sole purpose of informing decision-makers and the public about the environmental impacts of plastic bags, paper bags, and reusable bags. They say "the anti-plastic bag campaign is largely based on myths, misinformation, and exaggerations. We are responding with environmental truth." Accordingly, on the website, you can find information, such as "what is really killing seas turtles. It is not plastic bags!" or 'the oil myth', explaining why it's not true to claim that domestically produced plastic bags are made of oil.

The website also mentions that the coalition "is not and has never been connected with or financed by the American Chemistry Council or Progressive Bag Affiliates. We are a totally independent organization." At the same time, they mention in an early document that "the founding members are Elkay Plastics and Command Packaging," and that the group will include "plastic bag manufacturers, plastic bag distributors, retailers, and concerned citizens." So I guess you don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out why the coalition was dissatisfied San Francisco's decision to broaden its plastic bag ban.

And it's not just San Francisco. A memorandum sent on March 8 by Stephen Joseph, a counsel for the coalition to California cities and counties, states that "Save The Plastic Bag Coalition ("STPB") will sue every city or county that adopts an ordinance that regulates or bans plastic bags at any restaurant or "food facility." He mentions there area a couple of other cases where the coalition filed a lawsuit, such as the case of Santa Cruz County, which was sued for banning plastic bags at restaurants. In response, the county repealed the ban, Joseph writes.

Joseph also mentions in the memorandum that the coalition is filing a lawsuit against Manhattan Beach to invalidate its restaurant ban. Yet, one detail he doesn't mention is that California's highest court has actually upheld the same ban. This case is actually mentioned in the lawsuit against the city of San Francisco because while the court exempted Manhattan Beach from conducting an environmental review, it said that "the analysis would be different for a ban on plastic bags by a larger governmental body, which might precipitate a significant increase in paper bag consumption." Guess who is a larger governmental body? Yep, the city of San Francisco. At least according to the lawsuit.

Not surprisingly, the lawsuit against San Francisco includes a whole part trying to make the case that paper and compostable bags are "far worse for the environment than plastic bags." If you're still into this debate, I'm sure you will find this part interesting. Even if you're one of those who believes 'neither' is the right answer to the paper or plastic question, you might find some interesting statements in the lawsuit, such as the part focusing on the question of how large the fee on non-plastic single-use bags should be. According to the lawsuit, in the original draft ordinance, the City of San Francisco was planning to increase the paper and compostable bag fee to 25 cents on July 1, 2014, yet the fee in the ordinance has been set on 10 cents with no increase.

This fee question is important because the new ban means there's a good chance more paper bags will be used in San Francisco. The city believes the net impact will still be positive due to a 10-cent paper and compostable bag fee that will incentivize residents to carry reusable bags. But is this really the case? It's certainly not clear.

It seems that the strategy of the coalition is to use the EIR as a tactical weapon. "We haven't challenged anyone that's done an EIR," Joseph told the San Francisco Examiner. The reason the coalition might have chosen this tactic is that completing EIRs can take years and can be prohibitively costly for many municipalities, especially in California.

Now, it doesn't mean that the process of conducting EIR is necessarily wrong, especially given the need for transparency when it comes to enacting a fee on single-use bags. But why does every municipality need to conduct a new report? Can't they all use one report and make minor adjustments accordingly? This is for the court to decide. Let's just hope it will finish the plastic or paper debate once and for all and let us move on.

[Image credit: cucchiaio, Flickr Creative Commons]

Raz Godelnik is the co-founder of Eco-Libris, a green company working to green up the book industry in the digital age. He is an adjunct faculty at the University of Delaware's Department of Business Administration, CUNY and the New School, teaching courses in green business and new product development.

Controversial strawberry pesticide pulled from US

Associated Press
March 21, 2012

FRESNO, Calif. -- The maker of a controversial strawberry pesticide said it's pulling all sales of the chemical from the U.S. market, surprising growers and environmentalists.

Tokyo-based Arysta LifeScience Inc. said late Tuesday that it's immediately suspending the sale, marketing and production of all formulations of the fumigant Midas, or methyl iodide in the U.S.

The company said the decision is based on the product's economic viability in the United States.

California regulators approved use of methyl iodide in December 2010 despite opposition from scientists and environmental and farmworker groups who claim it's highly toxic and can cause cancer. Environmentalists and public health advocates have since been pressuring Gov. Jerry Brown's administration to reconsider the decision.

An Alameda County Superior Court judge was expected to rule soon on a lawsuit by environmentalists who asked the state to vacate approval for the fumigant.

The chemical, which is injected into soil, kills bugs, weeds and plant diseases. It's used by some growers of tomatoes, peppers and other crops. In California, it was primarily targeted for use by the large strawberry industry.

Methyl iodide was widely seen as a replacement for another fumigant, methyl bromide, which is being phased out under international treaty because it depletes the Earth's ozone. The new fumigant was approved by the U.S. EPA and registered in 48 states.

Arysta officials said methyl iodide was applied "without a single safety violation" on 17,000 acres across the southeast - a tiny fraction of farmland - since it was first registered five years ago.

But the new fumigant never took off in California. Only five applications - all under five acres - took place since the state registered the pesticide. That included a single strawberry farmer using the chemical on a small test site.

Arysta officials said the company will continue to maintain the federal Midas label registered with the EPA. The company will also assess whether to maintain registration with the 48 states

Environmentalists who clamored to get the chemical off the market hailed the unexpected decision and attributed it to their political and legal pressure. They said the news comes just in time for spring strawberry season.

"This is a pleasant surprise and a huge victory, especially for rural residents and farmworkers across the country," said Paul Towers of Pesticide Action Network. "Arysta saw the writing on the wall and chose to pull their cancer-causing methyl iodide product."

It's unclear how the company's decision will affect the pending lawsuit. California Department of Pesticide Regulation spokeswoman Lea Brooks said Arysta has not requested voluntary cancellation of the fumigant's registration.

The strawberry industry was also surprised by the decision, said Carolyn O'Donnell, communications director for the California Strawberry Commission. Growers are concerned, O'Donnell said, about the future implications of methyl iodide being pulled off the shelves while methyl bromide is being phased out.

In recent years, the Strawberry Commission has poured more than $12 million into university research to look at alternatives to fumigation, such as crop rotation, eliminating soil pathogens by using natural sources of carbon and sterilizing soil with steam.

And earlier this month, the commission and the California Department of Pesticide Regulation announced a research partnership looking for alternatives to fumigants. The $500,000, three-year project is will focus on growing strawberries in peat, tree bark or other non-soil substances that are disease-free.

While alternatives are being developed, some growers are still relying on methyl bromide, the fumigant that's being phased out, while others have switched to fumigants such as chloropicrin and metam sodium, O'Donnell said.

Part of the reason why growers might have been reluctant to use methyl iodide, O'Donnell said, is because the regulations were so strict.

"People like to live where strawberries like to grow," O'Donnell said. "A lot of times, because of that, the rules excluded a lot of the acres from being fumigated."

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/03/21/4355789/controversial-strawberry-pesticide.html#storylink=cpy

Why the Most Environmental Building is the Building We've Already Built

January 24, 2012
Atlantic Cities
Emily Badger Reuters

Reusing an old building pretty much always has less of an impact on the environment than tearing it down, trashing the debris, clearing the site, crafting new materials and putting up a replacement from scratch. This makes some basic sense, even without looking at the numbers.

But what if the new building is super energy-efficient? How do the two alternatives compare over a lifetime, across generations of use?

"We often come up against this argument that, 'Oh well, the existing building could never compete with the new building in terms of energy efficiency,'" says Patrice Frey, the director of sustainability for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "We wanted to model that."

Preservation Green Lab, the Trust's sustainability think tank, has published a new study today examining this that puts big numbers behind the finding that the greenest buildings aren't in fact state-of-the-art ones; they're the ones we already have.

Retrofit an existing building to make it 30 percent more efficient, the study found, and it will essentially always remain a better bet for the environment than a new building built tomorrow with the same efficiencies. Take that new, more efficient building, though, and compare its life cycle to an average existing structure with no retrofitting, and it could still take up to 80 years for the new one to make up for the environmental impact of its initial construction.

The study looked at six types of buildings set in cities from four different climates: Phoenix, Chicago, Atlanta and Portland, Oregon. The building typologies modeled were commercial offices, warehouse conversions, urban village mixed-use buildings, elementary schools, single-family homes and multi-family residences. From every single one of these categories, in every climate, retrofitting the existing building produces less of an environmental impact than constructing a new one on the same plot of land. The lone exception was warehouses conversions to multi-family residences, a more intensive form of reuse.

The most interesting data lies in how new buildings compare to existing ones if we don't even bother to retrofit them. This chart from the report shows how much time it would take for a new building that's 30 percent more efficient to overcome – through all that efficiency – the impact of its construction (much of which lies in the use of all that new material).

This means that you could put up a new mixed-use building in Portland that's 30 percent more efficient than an otherwise identical one across the street that already exists. It would still take 80 years for that new building to have – over its entire life cycle – the better environmental impact. That conclusion contradicts the common perception that we may innovate our way out of climate change with ever more efficient new stuff.

"This is a strategy that most policy-makers aren't thinking about," Frey says. "Everyone wants a monument, a shiny new thing to put their name on, to make their mark. And I think some of it is just a cultural preference for new. We have a real estate industry that really – at least before the Great Recession – wasn't particularly well attuned to dealing with existing buildings. The model was demolish the site, clear the site and build from scratch. That was the calculus they were used to."

Some older estimates suggest that we have been demolishing and replacing about 1 billion square feet of buildings in the U.S. each year (OK, probably not during the economic downturn). And the Brookings Institution has projected that we could turn over as much as a quarter of all of our building stock by 2030.

In this context, Preservation Green Lab's study suggests the city of Portland, for example, could meet 15 percent of its emissions-reduction goals over the next decade just by reusing the 1 percent of its buildings the city expects to demolish over that time. That's not to say the most decrepit house must be saved (although that would make for a good Portlandia episode).

"We're not coming out and saying 'all buildings have to be reused,' and 'all new construction is bad,'" Frey says. "What we're advocating for is a shift in thinking, where at a minimum, we're considering the environmental impacts associated with demolishing places before we tear them down and build something new."

Oh, and doing this would also give a bunch of us jobs!

Photo credit: Robert Galbraith/Reuters