Tag Archives: business & technology

TransCanada’s latest move perfectly illustrates why so many people hate free-trade deals

by PatrickY96 Posted on June 27, 2016

Ceci n’est pas une pipeline

TransCanada’s latest move perfectly illustrates why so many people hate free-trade deals

By on Jun 27, 2016Share

TransCanada is demanding that the U.S. fork over $15 billion to make up for the fact that the company didn’t get to build the Keystone XL pipeline. That’s one damned expensive temper tantrum.

On Friday, TransCanada filed a formal request under NAFTA seeking to recover costs and damages related to the thwarted pipeline project, following through on a threat it made in January. The Canadian firm claims that the Obama administration’s decision to reject the pipeline was unjustified and violated the U.S.’s obligations under NAFTA. “[T]he rejection was symbolic and based merely on the desire to make the U.S. appear strong on climate change,” TransCanada complained in its filing.

Climate activists and other environmentalists say this is a perfect example of why they oppose many trade deals, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which Obama is currently trying to get approved. “The TPP would empower thousands of new firms operating in the U.S, including major polluters, to follow in TransCanada’s footsteps and undermine our critical climate safeguards in private trade tribunals,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club.

The State Department argues that the Keystone rejection was consistent with NAFTA requirements, but some trade experts say there’s a real chance TransCanada could win its case.

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TransCanada’s latest move perfectly illustrates why so many people hate free-trade deals

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Here come GMO labels!

by ElmoDonohoe Posted on June 24, 2016

GMO-it-all

Here come GMO labels!

By on Jun 23, 2016Share

I’m too high-minded to say “I told you so,” but after a lot of wrangling, the Senate struck a deal on Thursday that would lead to mandatory labels for genetically engineered ingredients across the United States. Just like I said it would.

It’s a compromise between Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Agriculture Committee that would make labeling of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, mandatory. But it would allow food makers to convey the information in a barcode or QR code, which you could see on your smartphone or on an in-store computer screen. And the compromise does not require the labeling of foods produced with gene-editing techniques. See more details here.

This deal cues up a full Senate vote, likely as soon as next week. After passing through the Senate, it would then have to be reconciled with similar bill that already passed the House, and get President Obama’s signature. If this bill becomes a law it would preempt a stricter GMO-labeling law in Vermont, which is scheduled to go into effect on July 1.

The whole thing is unfolding just as I predicted. Republicans compromised by making the labels mandatory, and Democrats compromised by allowing a scannable code rather than simply printing the words “contains GMOs” on packages. Here’s why scannable codes are perhaps a better idea than you might think.

It’s the only workable bargain and a pragmatic one. It will allow people who really care about avoiding GMOs to do it, without making it seem like that’s the key concern.

But let’s not stop here. If we are going to put a label on the front of the box, let’s say something about its greenhouse gas emissions or its effect on biodiversity — stuff that matters a lot more than GMOs. Maybe one day, consumers will learn more about those things when they scan QR codes.

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Here come GMO labels!

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That massive methane leak in L.A. was visible from space

by JulianeBurchfie Posted on June 16, 2016

emission control

That massive methane leak in L.A. was visible from space

By on Jun 16, 2016Share

The massive methane leak in California’s Alisio Canyon may have been invisible to the human eye, but it wasn’t invisible to NASA.

The leak, which spewed an estimated 97,100 metric tons of the greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, led to the evacuation of thousands of residents, and took nearly 4 months to stop. Now, NASA has released infrared images of the methane plume, as captured by satellites. This is the first time a methane leak has been observable from space, the Washington Post reports.

Two images methane plumes over Aliso Canyon, California, acquired 11 days apart in Jan. 2016.NASA-JPL/Caltech/GSFC

Methane is an especially potent greenhouse gas, 84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (though it doesn’t hang around in the atmosphere quite as long). The ability to observe it from space could be a powerful tool in tracking global emissions targets set at the 2015 Paris climate accord, according to the Post.

As for the Alisio Canyon leak, the natural gas facility has been shut down since February, prompting concerns about power outages for the region. The California Public Utilities Commission is currently looking at solutions, including voluntary air conditioning interruptions, rebates for smart thermostats, and expanded solar initiatives.

But the damage has been done: In the months before the Alisio Canyon leak was stopped, it released the equivalent annual greenhouse gas emissions of 572,000 cars.

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That massive methane leak in L.A. was visible from space

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Massive sinkholes in Texas could combine to form even massiver sinkhole

by ShonaDeason Posted on June 15, 2016

Everything’s bigger in Texas

Massive sinkholes in Texas could combine to form even massiver sinkhole

By on Jun 15, 2016Share

Welcome to West Texas, where sometimes the ground just opens up under your feet.

Two existing sinkholes — one in the adorably named town of Wink, the other in the absurdly named town of Kermit — are about a mile away from each other, but data suggests they might be expanding. Researchers from Southern Methodist University analyzed radar images of the area and found some hints of movement in the surrounding ground. If the sinkholes keep growing, it’s possible they will merge into one supermassive sinkhole.

And that would be a big problem indeed.

“This area is heavily populated with oil and gas production equipment and installations, hazardous liquid pipelines, as well as two communities,” said study author Jin-Woo Kim in a press release. “A collapse could be catastrophic.”

Sinkholes are not uncommon in this part of West Texas, thanks to the area’s prolific oil and gas industries. These particular sinkholes, however, are large even by Texas standards: The hole in Wink, which formed in 1980, is 361 feet across — or the length of a football field — and its neighbor in Kermit varies between 600 and 900 feet across. Both are over 100 feet deep.

Sinkholes occur when water dissolves bedrock over time, and then — sometimes suddenly — the ground collapses. They can be just a few feet across, or, like these ones, big enough to hold buildings. (A 2013 sinkhole opened up under the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Ky., and swallowed eight classic cars.) And while sinkholes can form naturally, they are also created by human activity like oil and gas extraction.

The expanding sinkholes are, naturally, some concern for local residents. In 2014, Winkler County Sheriff George Keely told the local news that cracks were forming in the roads around the sinkhole. “This looks like something from the moon or Jules Verne or something,” Keely said on a visit to the larger of the two. “I do not like being out here.”

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Massive sinkholes in Texas could combine to form even massiver sinkhole

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This veggie burger is so juicy it literally bleeds

by WDCIsmaeltjydj Posted on May 24, 2016

Disclaimer: This burger is not vegetarian. Shutterstock

This veggie burger is so juicy it literally bleeds

By on May 24, 2016Share

At this point, we all know how bad meat is for the planet. A short list of the impacts of meat cultivation on land include deforestation, overgrazing, compaction, and soil erosion. One pound of beef requires about 1,800 gallons of water to produce. And our carnivorous tendencies produce, according to some estimates, as much as 50 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — more than cars, planes, trains and ships combined.

But it’s delicious, which is probably why 84 percent of vegetarians eventually go back to eating it (including this writer and at least 20 percent of the Grist staff). A person can only convince themselves that veggie burgers don’t taste like compacted sawdust for so long — until, possibly, now. A Los Angeles-area startup claims to have produced a veggie burger that can meet all your red-blooded desires.

Beyond Meat creates meat products sans meat, and their latest venture, the Beyond Burger, promises to look, taste, and feel just like the real thing. And apparently there’s an eager market for it: The Beyond Burger launched in the meat aisle — right alongside beef, poultry, pork, and lamb — at a Whole Foods in Boulder, Colo., Monday, and sold out within an hour, according to the company.

Unlike most veggie burgers, which are commonly blends of black beans and soy mash, the Beyond Burger is made of 20 grams of pea protein. The reviews, so far, are positive: A Whole Foods exec said it “tasted, felt and chewed like any other burger.” (Although, given that Whole Foods is selling it, maybe take that with a grain of organic, free-range salt.) It also looks like one — the burger “bleeds” beet juice when you bite into it.

Here it is, in all its flesh-free glory:

Plant-based alternatives to animal products make up a burgeoning trend: The New York Times reports that foods made from plant protein grew almost 9 percent from 2014 to 2015 — nearly three times the growth of overall food sales.

Unfortunately for vegetarians — or anyone — hankering for a convincing slab of pea protein to throw on the grill this summer, you’re going to have to wait: The Beyond Burger is currently only available in the Boulder Whole Foods (know your audience, as they say), but the company hopes to expand to other markets next year.

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This veggie burger is so juicy it literally bleeds

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Guess who produces the most oil and gas in the world?

by SylvestMccord Posted on May 23, 2016

Guess who produces the most oil and gas in the world?

By on May 23, 2016

Cross-posted from

Climate CentralShare

The U.S. led the world last year in producing both oil and gas, federal government estimates published Monday show, even as the country committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The U.S. was the globe’s leading producer of crude oil for the third year in a row in 2015. Government estimates show that crude oil production has continued to grow across the country, from nearly 8 million barrels of oil per day in 2008 to about 15 million in 2015. The U.S. produced about 14 million barrels per day in 2014.

Thanks to the fracking boom, which unlocked previously hard-to-reach shale oil and gas, the U.S. surpassed Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s leading producer of oil in 2013. The U.S. became the top natural gas producer in 2011, and has led the world in both oil and gas production together for four years in a row.

As oil prices remain low, U.S. oil production is expected to decline slightly in 2016 and 2017, falling to about 14.5 million barrels per day, the estimates show. U.S. Energy Information Administration analyst Linda Doman said the decline is not likely to mark 2015 as an all-time peak in U.S. oil production, which could pick up if and when oil prices climb again.

The uptick in crude production last year came as the U.S. helped strike the Paris Climate Agreement, which aims to keep global warming from exceeding 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels. The Obama administration also killed the Keystone XL Pipeline last year, partly because the oil it would carry would worsen climate change.

Climate scientists say U.S. oil and gas production trends and the administration’s “all of the above” energy strategy, which includes encouraging fossil fuels and renewables production, don’t square well with its climate policy.

“The U.S. can lead the world in both climate action and crude oil production, but not for long,” said Jonathan Koomey, a research fellow at the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University. “To preserve a stable climate we need to phase out fossil fuel consumption as fast as possible, starting as soon as possible. This is why the administration’s ‘all of the above’ energy strategy is incoherent. We have to stop building new fossil fuel infrastructure and start retiring existing infrastructure.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann said the U.S. must embrace renewable energy more fervently and decarbonize the economy.

“It is necessary both for avoiding catastrophic climate change and retaining our international economic competitiveness,” he said. “The good news is that we’re moving in that direction, though — as we can see with these latest numbers — the benefits of very recent climate policies enacted under the Obama administration have yet to be fully realized.”

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Guess who produces the most oil and gas in the world?

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Duke Energy will have to clean up its filthy coal ash sites … eventually

by EfrenGDFDgoxeo Posted on May 19, 2016

Duke Energy will have to clean up its filthy coal ash sites … eventually

By on May 19, 2016Share

Duke Energy is finally being ordered to clean up its coal-ash ponds in North Carolina — more than two years after one of them leaked 40,000 tons of toxic muck into the Dan River. But it has eight years to get the job done, and the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) hopes to give the company even more flexibility.

Duke, the nation’s largest electric utility, has 33 sites around the state where it dumps toxic ash waste from its coal-fired power plants, and some of the sites are believed to be leaking hazardous chemicals into nearby water supplies. For a year, hundreds of households near coal ash ponds were told not to drink water from their wells, which was found to have high levels on a known carcinogen. This spring, they were told they could resume drinking the water, even though it hadn’t been cleaned up. (We wrote more about this earlier this week.)

In a proposal released on Wednesday, DEQ said Duke should excavate and close eight of the most dangerous coal ash sites by 2019, and the 25 others by 2025. But DEQ is asking the state legislature to be allowed to reconsider the timeline in 18 months. The agency has been accused of being lenient on Duke; last year, DEQ lowered the utility’s fine for the big 2014 spill from $25 million to $7 million.

Duke CEO Lynn Goode said the cost of the cleanup could be as high as $4 billion — and the company would seek to pass that cost on to the state’s residents. “It’s fair to say that if we have to excavate all of our basins, it would be significantly higher costs for our customers,” Goode said during a conference call with reporters.

Environmentalists say the DEQ’s recommendations don’t go far enough. “DEQ just ducked its responsibility and punted it into the future,” said Peter Harrison, attorney for the Waterkeeper Alliance. “As usual, North Carolina’s so-called leadership has shown it lacks the courage to stand up to powerful polluters, even when people’s health is at stake.”

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Duke Energy will have to clean up its filthy coal ash sites … eventually

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America’s hoarding a huge stash of uneaten cheese

by Steffen5482 Posted on May 18, 2016

Make Americans grate again

America’s hoarding a huge stash of uneaten cheese

By on May 18, 2016 5:00 amShare

Stop everything: The U.S. has been hoarding a massive stash of uneaten cheese weighing in at around 1.2 billion pounds — without telling you! To work off that surplus, the Wall Street Journal points out, everyone in the United States would have to eat an extra three pounds of cheese this year.

“No problem!” you say, rolling up your sleeves. But wait — before you take up your duty as a citizen and stuff your face with equal parts deep-fried mac and cheese and crêpes au fromage, consider this: That quantity of cheese consumption might contribute to global destruction.

We’re only being a bit hyperbolic, because it turns out that a block of muenster has a pretty monstrous climate impact. One study declared cheese the third-worst animal food product for greenhouse gas emissions, following beef and lamb. Chicken, tuna, and eggs all have lighter carbon footprints. Here’s why: To create cheese, you need a lot of milk — about 10 pounds of milk per pound of hard cheese, to be precise — and the dairy cows who produce that milk also produce a lot of climate-changing methane.

America’s cows are expected to produce a record-breaking 212.4 billion pounds of milk this year. Much of that will be sold to cheesemakers, who are currently hoarding big blocks of cheese in freezers and waiting for prices to rise.

Why? The Wall Street Journal reports that two years ago, farmers expanded their dairy operations to meet high demand, particularly from overseas. But now dairy prices have dropped and the dollar has climbed, so our friends around the globe aren’t buying as much of our queso dip anymore. But all those extra cows are still around, pumping out methane and milk. Mmm!

When it comes to America’s cheese situation, it looks like we just have too much of a … gouda thing.

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America’s hoarding a huge stash of uneaten cheese

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Tesla’s labor controversy shows that a green job isn’t always a good job

by TracieG65h Posted on May 17, 2016

Tesla’s labor controversy shows that a green job isn’t always a good job

By on May 17, 2016Share

Last spring, a worker installing pipes in the roof of a Tesla Motors shop in Fremont, Calif., slipped and fell three stories onto a concrete floor. He broke both legs, and was concussed so badly that he drifted in and out of consciousness in a San Jose hospital for days.

In the hospital, the worker, Gregor Lesnik, asked for a lawyer. He was part of a crew of about 140 workers who had been brought over on a temporary B1 visa from Eastern Europe by a Slovenian construction company. According to Lesnik, he was paid less than $5 an hour — half the current California minimum wage, and a fraction of the going rate of $52 an hour for similar work in the area. The crew worked 10-hour shifts, six or seven days a week, with no overtime pay.

Lesnik’s accident was a reminder of a very old problem — just because a job is better for the environment, doesn’t make it better for the person who has it. Without strong labor standards, new green jobs can be just as dangerous and exploitative as the old ones they’re meant to replace. Treating workers poorly also risks the political goodwill that has brought the industry so many subsidies and tax breaks over the years.

Tesla told the San Jose Mercury News — which broke the story over the weekend — that Lesnik’s injuries and wages weren’t the company’s responsibility, because he wasn’t an employee. Tesla had hired a German company, Eisenmann, to build the new paint facility, and Eisenmann hired a Slovenian company, Vuzem, to provide the labor. “Mr. Lesnik was injured when he allegedly failed to wear the proper safety harness provided by his employer,” Tesla told the Mercury News. Other men on the Vuzem crew confirmed Lesnik’s story — long hours, working on weekends, no overtime pay — though they were more experienced, and made closer to $10 per hour.

This isn’t the first time Tesla’s use of contractors has caused controversy. Since the article was published, however, Tesla and its founder Elon Musk have promised to make things right.

“We are taking action to address this individual’s situation and to put in place additional oversight to ensure that our workplace rules are followed even by sub-subcontractors to prevent such a thing from happening again,” the company wrote on its blog. “Assuming the article is correct, we need to do right by Mr. Lesnik and his colleagues from Vuzem.”

Tesla’s blog post said representatives from the state’s occupational safety agency investigated the incident and cleared the company of any responsibility. “As far as the law goes, Tesla did everything correctly,” the company said. The sad thing is, they appear to be right.

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Tesla’s labor controversy shows that a green job isn’t always a good job

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Oil-rich Alaska has surprising solar power potential

by MelodyMortensen Posted on May 10, 2016

Oil-rich Alaska has surprising solar power potential

By on May 10, 2016Share

In oil-rich Alaska, where there’s little sunlight in the winter, solar power isn’t an obvious option.

But it is a promising one. A recent study from the U.S. Department of Energy looked at the potential of solar in 11 remote Alaskan villages and found that in many areas, it’s cost-competitive with diesel.

Some 175 Alaskan communities rely almost exclusively on petroleum products like diesel for their energy needs — not exactly an optimal situation for energy security in these remote towns, where transporting fuel comes at a high cost. People in these communities pay more for power than anywhere else in the U.S. That’s one big reason these communities could stand to diversify the energy eggs they’re putting in their resilience baskets. Since solar energy isn’t practical during the winter, it’s important that these communities rely on a combination of energy sources (wind is an option some towns have explored).

Overall, thanks to Alaska’s sunny, radiant summers, the solarscape looks more promising than you might expect given those dreary winter months. The DOE study compares the state’s solar potential to that of Germany, the world’s current poster child for all things solar and wind, which isn’t particularly sunny, either. The image below compares how much solar radiation shines down on both regions in terms of kilowatt-hours per square meter per day.

Billy J. Roberts/National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Looks like solar’s not just for sun-drenched California anymore.

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Oil-rich Alaska has surprising solar power potential

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