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Did China just outdo Obama on climate action?

by AngelikaSantacr Posted on June 3, 2014

Did China just outdo Obama on climate action?

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Just one day after the Obama administration proposed new power plant CO2 rules, alerting the world that the U.S. is finally starting to take climate action seriously, the planet’s other climate-polluting giant is making similar headlines. China is considering imposing an absolute cap on carbon emissions in 2016, a senior government official announced in Beijing on Tuesday.

Few specific details are available, but a cap on emissions, which would likely incorporate the country’s nascent carbon-trading system, is being seen as a potentially major step in curbing the nation’s climate impacts.

“We hope to implement this in the 13th five-year plan, but the plan has not been fixed yet, so it isn’t government policy yet,” Professor He Jiankun, vice-chairman of China’s National Experts Panel on Climate Change, told the Financial Times following the announcement. “This is our experts’ advice and suggestion.”

Here’s more from Reuters:

Carbon emissions in [China’s] coal-reliant economy are likely to continue to grow until 2030, but setting an absolute cap instead of pegging them to the level of economic growth means they will be more tightly regulated and not spiral out of control.

“The Chinese announcement marks potentially the most important turning point in the global scene on climate change for a decade,” said Michael Grubb, a professor of international energy and climate policy at University College London.

It is not clear at what level the cap would be set, and a final number is unlikely to be released until China has worked out more details of the five-year plan, possibly sometime next year.

The rapid-fire announcements by the U.S. and China, which together spew out more than 40 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, are offering fresh hope that an effective climate treaty could be agreed upon during U.N. negotiations late next year in Paris. Without the support and participation of both of these countries, there’s little chance of meaningful global climate action.

Some world climate leaders had optimistically taken to calling 2014 the “year of ambition.” The developments of the last 48 hours won’t alone come close to solving the world’s climate woes, but the messages that they send to the rest of the world offer hope that 2014 might one day be remembered as the “year of resolve.”


Source
China climate adviser urges emissions cap, Financial Times
China plan to cap CO2 emissions seen turning point in climate talks, Reuters

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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How the Royal Navy Helped the Late Peter O’Toole Become an Acting Legend

by JanisEasley Posted on December 15, 2013

Mother Jones

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Peter O’Toole, the phenomenally talented Irish-English actor famous for his roles in such films as Lawrence of Arabia and Becket, died on Saturday at the age of 81. He was being treated at the Wellington Hospital in London after a long illness, according to his agent.

“My thoughts are with Peter O’Toole’s family and friends,” British Prime Minister David Cameron tweeted. “His performance in my favourite film, Lawrence of Arabia, was stunning.” President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins added: “Ireland, and the world, has lost one of the giants of film and theatre…I was privileged to know him as a friend since 1969…He was unsurpassed for the grace he brought to every performance on and off the stage.”

O’Toole leaves behind a towering legacy in theater and cinema. In his earlier days, he was also a notorious party boy who lost much of his sizeable Lawrence of Arabia paycheck in a two-night gambling spree with co-star Omar Sharif at casinos in Casablanca and Beirut. “I was happy to grab the hand of misfortune, dissipation, riotous living, and violence,” O’Toole told the Sunday Express in 1995.

His epic carousing, however, turned to cautionary tale when in the mid-1970s he was diagnosed with pancreatitis, and subsequently had chunks of intestinal tubing removed; he then gave up the bottle, having gone to the brink of death. He would later say of his unexpected recovery, “It proved inconvenient to a few people, but there you go.”

O’Toole earned eight Academy Award nominations without bagging a single win (a record), but was presented with an Honorary Oscar in 2003. In a way, O’Toole, a former journalist-in-training, owed his entire career in acting to a conversation he had with a skipper while serving in the Royal Navy. As he told NPR:

I served with men who’d been blown up in the Atlantic, who’d seen their friends drinking icy bubbles in oil and being machine gunned in the water. And I mentioned that I wasn’t particularly satisfied with what I was doing in civilian life, which was working for a newspaper. And the skipper said to me one night, have you any unanswered calls inside you that you don’t understand or can’t qualify? I said, well, yes, I do. I quite fancy myself either as a poet or an actor. He said, well, if you don’t at least give it a try, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.

In honor of his passing, here are a few great clips of the actor when he wasn’t acting on stage or in a big movie: O’Toole’s classic entrance on Late Show with David Letterman:

O’Toole and Orson Welles debating Hamlet on the BBC in 1963:

…and, finally, O’Toole reciting the Spice Girls:

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Hindu Lore to Racial Politics, MIA’s "Matangi" Delivers

by PorterEspino Posted on November 18, 2013

Mother Jones

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Maya Arulpragasm (best known as MIA), predicted the NSA spying scandal. She is pop’s most rebellious musician. And after a delay of several years, her new album, which she has described as sounding like “Paul Simon on acid,” was finally released earlier this month. Whether or not it lives up to her characterization, Matangi—titled after MIA’s namesake, the Hindu goddess of music and the spoken word—is decidedly eclectic, ranging from reggae rhythms to club beats, hip-hop vocals to slower love songs, and Eastern instrumentation to a mainstream pop style.

An MIA album would be nothing without a complex, varied message, and Matangi delivers. It’s replete with allusions to Hindu stories and spirituality, alongside more current (if slightly outdated) pop-culture references: “YALA” (you always live again) plays off the cultural meme YOLO (you only live once) popularized by Drake’s “The Motto.” MIA’s response explores the Hindu concepts of reincarnation and karma. “YOLO?” she sings. “I don’t even know anymore…back home where I come from we keep being born again and again and again.” “Come Walk With Me,” ostensibly a song about modern love and romance, is accompanied by a an animated video of Hindu imagery.

Matangi also offers a strong (if ambiguous) political message. “Brown girl, brown girl, turn your shit down. You know America don’t want to hear your sound,” she raps on the short track “Boom.” Meanwhile, “aTENTion” was “written with all the words that have ‘tent’ in them,” she told NPR. “It’s sort of to describe the refugee philosophy—people who live in tents—because I feel like they are the modern-day untouchables…they’re faceless and placeless.” The song, weirdly enough, was written with the help of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, who came by her London studio while she was working on his TV series. Mixed messages aside, Matangi, is everything you’d thought it would be, and gets better with every listen.

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Hindu Lore to Racial Politics, MIA’s "Matangi" Delivers

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These Beautiful "Place-Hacking" Photos Will Give You an Adrenaline Rush

by surfikdon Posted on November 15, 2013

Mother Jones

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They call themselves “place hackers”—urban adventurers who get a thrill (and bragging rights) from exploring forbidden spaces: old military bases, sewer systems, decommissioned hospitals, power stations—even the odd skyscraper under construction. Just like backpackers, they have an ethical code: no vandalism or theft, take only photographs, leave only footprints. “The idea behind urban exploration is revealing what’s hidden,” explains Bradley Garrett, author of the recent book Explore Everything: Place Hacking the City. “It’s about going into places that are essentially off limits and, because they are off limits, have been relatively forgotten.” The goal is not just to explore, he adds, but to document and share as well. To wit: Check out these 12 amazing photos from Garrett’s book.

Effra Sewer, South London

Saint Sulpice Church, Paris

King’s Reach Tower, London

New Court Building, London

Ritz-Carlton Residences, Chicago

Legacy Tower, Chicago

Temple Court Building, London

Legacy Tower, Chicago

Lost Kingdom Water Park, Riverside, California

GLC Pipe Subways, London

Skyscraper Crane, Aldgate East, London

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Centuries worth of CO2 emissions could be stored underground, but at what cost?

by Sylvesterax6 Posted on June 28, 2013

Centuries worth of CO2 emissions could be stored underground, but at what cost?

By John Upton

Radoslaw Maciejewski / Shutterstock

We could store CO2 underground, though not in the London Underground.

We could liquefy and cram our carbon dioxide emissions into the ground for some 500 years before America’s geologic basins started to overflow with the stuff.

That’s according to a new assessment by federal scientists, who spent years scouring America for porous rocks thousands of feet beneath the ground that might be appropriate for carbon sequestration.

They studied 36 geologic basins that could be suitable and found that the best region for storing waste CO2 would be the Gulf Coast. From the Houston Chronicle:

Brenda Pierce, energy resources program coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey, … said one reason the Gulf is attractive is its relative lack of fresh groundwater, since any area with fresh groundwater was eliminated as a potential storage site. In addition, only rock layers deep enough to keep carbon dioxide under sufficient pressure to remain liquid and to prevent it from escaping were considered a good fit.

But just because the storage space is available doesn’t mean that the approach would be feasible. Or safe.

The scientists say the 36 potential underground storage spots might be able to hold roughly 3,000 metric gigatons of liquefied CO2. For context, the U.S. releases between 5 and 6 metric gigatons of CO2 every year from power plants, vehicles, and other spots where fuel is burned to produce energy.

Two-thirds of the total storage potential was found to be in the Coastal Plains region, mostly along the Gulf Coast. The dark gray spots on this map show the areas that were assessed:

USGS

But most of America’s CO2 emissions come from coal-burning power plants that are located far from the Gulf. To get the CO2 from the power plants to the Gulf, it would need to be ferried through pipelines, and that would be a costly proposition. From Platts:

[T]he study clearly shows that the basins with the highest potential for carbon storage are away from the Southeast region, Mid-Atlantic and Ohio Valley, which accounts for 65% of the US’ coal-fired capacity, according to the US Energy Information Administration. This means that despite the US storage potential, infrastructure needs — including a number of new pipelines which need to be built to connect power plants, compression stations and these basins — could make geologic sequestration costly.

De Smog Blog points to even more financial hurdles:

According to a database maintained at MIT’s Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies program, there are currently six large scale CCS projects underway in the United States. Five of the six projects are still in the planning phase, with one project listed as under construction. The current projected price tag of these six projects is a whopping $16.7 billion.

That’s a lot to gamble on a risky technology that continues to struggle to prove it’s even possible to deploy on a global scale. And $16.7 billion is only the opening bet. A full scale deployment of CCS technology across the entire US would likely be in the hundreds of billions. Estimates run as high as $1.5 trillion a year to deploy and operate enough carbon capture and storage worldwide to significantly reduce carbon emissions from the fossil fuels we consume.

It’s also worth remembering that carbon sequestration can trigger earthquakes. Tremblers at CCS sites could not only cause physical damage around them, but release sequestered CO2 back into the atmosphere, thereby making the whole effort futile.

And who knows what other problems might arise in the decades or centuries to come from stuffing all that liquefied CO2 into the ground.

Still, considering the massive threat posed by climate change, carbon sequestration is worth investigating. “The United States has the ability to store a lot of carbon dioxide,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday. “If this proves to be economically viable — and that hasn’t been answered in this study — sequestration could help.”

That said, there would be no carbon dioxide emissions to store if we switched over to renewables.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Could a Chinese carbon cap pave the way for a global climate deal?

by wqds234der Posted on May 22, 2013

Could a Chinese carbon cap pave the way for a global climate deal?

By Claire Thompson

Like sparring siblings, China and the United States — the world’s two biggest carbon dioxide emitters — keep passing the climate-action buck back and forth: “Why should I cut emissions if they don’t have to?” Well, China is either the more mature of the pair, or just majorly sucking up to Mama Earth. The country is reportedly gearing up to set firm limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, seriously weakening one of the U.S.’s go-to excuses for climate inaction.

China’s powerful National Development and Reform Commission has proposed an absolute cap on emissions starting in 2016. The proposal still needs to be accepted by the Chinese cabinet, but experts say the commission’s influence makes it likely to pass. China today also announced the details of trial carbon-trading programs that will roll out in seven regions by 2014. In February, the country had said it would implement a carbon tax, but backed off a few weeks later, saying it will wait until early next year to get started on that.

The commission’s carbon-cap proposal calls for Chinese emissions to peak in 2025, five years earlier than previously planned. RenewEconomy explains:

China has already pledged to cut its emissions intensity – the amount of Co2 it emits per economic unit – by up to 45 per cent by 2020. The significance of an absolute cap is that it promises to rein in emissions even if the economy grows faster than expected.

A Chinese carbon cap could shake up future international climate negotiations, The Independent reports:

It marks a dramatic change in China’s approach to climate change that experts say will make countries around the world more likely to agree to stringent cuts to their carbon emissions in a co-ordinated effort to tackle global warming. …

“Such an important move should encourage all countries, and particularly the other large emitters such as the United States, to take stronger action on climate change. And it improves the prospects for a strong international treaty being agreed at the United Nations climate change summit in 2015,” added Lord [Nicholas] Stern, [chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics.]

The 2015 summit will take place in Paris. Previous U.N. climate talks have played out according to a familiar pattern: high hopes giving way to deadlock and failure. When the world’s largest emitters refuse to agree to limits on emissions, it makes the commitments of smaller countries somewhat pointless. U.K. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey told The Independent:

I’m really much more confident than many people about our ability to get an ambitious climate change deal done in 2015. Obama in his second term clearly wants to act on this and there has been a fantastic and dramatic change in America’s position. Taken together with China’s change, the tectonic plates of global climate change negotiations are really shifting.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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The success of London’s congestion charge, in three maps

by graptorm Posted on February 19, 2013

The success of London’s congestion charge, in three maps

By Philip Bump

Bike commuters in London.

Streetsblog, a network of sustainable-transportation-focused websites that you should read regularly, used the occasion of the 10th anniversary of London’s congestion pricing system to review its effectiveness. As you probably know, congestion pricing is a tool by which cities limit automobile and other traffic to certain areas by charging a fee for access. In London, that fee is £10, or about $15.

Has it worked? Streetsblog says yes — or, it did for a bit.

In its first few years, the London charging scheme was heralded as a solid traffic-buster, with 15-20 percent boosts in auto and bus speeds and 30 percent reductions in congestion delays. Most of those gains appear to have disappeared in recent years, however. Transport for London (TfL), which combines the functions of our NYCDOT and MTA and which created and operates the charging system, attributes the fallback in speeds to other changes in the streetscape and traffic management …

The congestion charge also raised millions in revenue, some $435 million in 2008 alone.

But the benefit over the past decade can be seen most clearly in the three maps Streetsblog provides.

Car traffic declines.

Bicycle usage rises.

Public transit use increases.

Less traffic, less congestion, more public transit use, more money for government investment. All the sorts of things that drive right-wing Americans insane. So I wouldn’t hold my breath for implementation in a U.S. city any time soon.

Source

Lessons From London After 10 Years of the Congestion Charge, Streetsblog

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Global life expectancies increase as infectious diseases and hunger wane

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 14, 2012

Global life expectancies increase as infectious diseases and hunger wane

By Philip Bump

Across the world, people are living longer.

Which is good news, of course! Don’t want people dying. And the increase is due largely to improvements in public health programs and access to food. From The New York Times:

A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and infectious diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a report published on Thursday, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases mostly associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.

The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are striking: infant mortality declined by more than half from 1990 to 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.

At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.

julien_harneis

Distributing mosquito nets in the Congo.

As the Times notes, 33 percent of global deaths in 1990 were of people 70 or older. In 2010, that figure was 43 percent.

There are a few dark clouds, of course. Life expectancy in the United States didn’t grow as quickly as in other regions, though expectancy in New York City continues to outpace the rest of the country. Life expectancies in sub-Saharan Africa continue to lag behind the rest of the world, in part due to the spike of AIDS-related deaths over the last two decades. (See this graph comparing causes of death between 1990 and 2010.)

We have a GIF globe in the system, so I’m using it.

As the Telegraph notes, obesity is now responsible for more deaths than hunger in most of the world.

Across the world, there has been significant success in tackling malnutrition, with deaths down two-thirds since 1990 to less than a million by 2010.

But increasing prosperity has led to expanding waistlines in countries from Colombia to Kazakhstan, as people eat more and get less everyday exercise.

Dr Majid Ezzati, chair of global environmental health at Imperial College London, and one of the lead authors of the report, said: “We have gone from a world 20 years ago where people weren’t getting enough to eat to a world now where too much food and unhealthy food — even in developing countries — is making us sick.”

Which leads to another reason the news is a mixed blessing. Increased life expectancy of course means more people on the planet longer — as the world begins to see the increasingly stark effects of global warming on food production. This summer’s drought and its concomitant food shortages are a preview of what’s to come in other food-producing regions (like, say, Europe). The trend of people eating themselves into sickness can be combated with better education and food options. A trend of starvation due to scarcity is much tougher to fight. As is a trend of wider spread of infectious disease facilitated by warmer climates.

A few years ago, I attended an event at which Bill McKibben spoke. Something he said there has stayed with me: What if we are the peak of human civilization, at least for a few centuries? What if right now is as good as it gets? I’m a bit of a pessimist, but it’s easy to see how this life expectancy news might be something of an apex.

And now, to wash that taste out of your mouth, here is a tiny adorable puppy. May he live forever.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Why we’re still fighting the smog that once choked London: It still kills

by Myrna Posted on December 5, 2012

Why we’re still fighting the smog that once choked London: It still kills

By Philip Bump

Sixty years ago today, London was pitch black. The “Great Smog,” a blanket of ozone and particles of soot, covered the city for days. Photos of the event show life in a dark gray cloud, cars’ headlights on no matter the time of day. An estimated 4,000 people died prematurely as a result of the pollution. (Want to relive the great smog? Follow @ClimateActio2n on Twitter as they live-tweet it.)

National ArchivesLouisville, Kentucky, 1972.

The Great Smog was an extreme. But its constituent parts — ozone, sulfur dioxide, and soot particles — have been a problem ever since, contributing to chronic lung and heart problems and the early deaths of thousands. Pollution like that above is what prompted the adoption of the U.S.’ Clean Air Act under President Nixon, the first comprehensive attempt to regulate air pollution.

The health benefits of the Clean Air Act are legion — and continually being reinforced. Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health recently determined, for example, that the decrease in soot (fine particulate matter) under current EPA regulations has yielded an increase in average American life expectancy of 0.35 years.

Fine particles, which are about 1/30th the average width of a human hair, come from a variety of sources, including vehicles, smokestacks and fires. They also form when gases emitted by power plants, industry and vehicle engines react in the atmosphere. …

The findings showed that cutting fine particle pollution had the greatest effect on life expectancy in urban areas – possibly because of differences in particle composition. Women also seemed to benefit more than men.

Yesterday, the EPA sent the White House a final version of a proposed rule tightening the amount of particulates allowed in the air. (We wrote about the initial proposal in June.) If approved, the new pollution standard could save between $2.3 and $5.9 billion in health costs a year. The EPA hopes to finalize the rule by Dec. 14.

As usual, the obstacle to cutting air pollution isn’t technological, it’s political. In 2011, President Obama killed a tighter restriction on ozone, worried that it would prove to be a liability during his reelection. With that behind him, there’s some reason to hope that EPA efforts to further restrict air pollution will see a smoother path forward.

National Archives

After all, London’s Great Smog was an extreme example of the dangers of air pollution, but deadly pollution doesn’t always black out the sun for a week. It’s an ongoing problem that requires ongoing study and adjustment. And, therefore, ongoing political will. The EPA regularly redraws the line on how many deaths from air pollution are acceptable. As the years pass and the damage from air pollution becomes more and more obvious, that line approaches zero.

Update: China today announced that it will spend $56 billion on reducing soot in 117 cities between now and 2015. While the air quality in many Chinese cities is generally understood to be dirtier than that of places in the U.S., it’s a big commitment on the issue.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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