Virescent

Speaking of relay races… last year about this time, the courts pointed out that the EPA had a duty to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, since they’re pollution, and hurt the environment, and allegedly the EPA is all about environmental protection or whatever.

The EPA promised to get back to the American people on that by the end of 2007, but we got nothing. Last week, a coagulation of groups and places (including Baltimore City, the state of Maryland, and Washington DC) filed a lawsuit against the EPA, seeking their proposed emissions limits, or really just any indication that the EPA is doing it’s job.

Meanwhile, some members of the House said it’d be silly to let the EPA write the laws, since they’d just get sued by anti-regulations types if they did. Instead, they think that legislators should pass some emissions laws, post-haste.

And today, rumors surfaced of a White House plan to control greenhouse gas emissions- maybe to be presented to the legislature by the end of the week (maybe take some people’s minds off that Colombia FTA, oof).

Well well.  Let’s start with the White House.  It’s not April Fool’s (I checked), and I don’t think it’s opposite day, so they might actually be serious.  Conventional wisdom has it (see resigned comments in other articles) that as long as Bush was in office, greenhouse gases would roll freely along.  Bush has proven himself to lack all sorts of foresight- has he just now caught up with the rest of the world?

Then the legislature.  After the biofuels silliness, will we really be so strapped as to ask our more posturing politicians to make coherent and helpful rules based on good science and a basic understanding of the economy?  Sends chills down my spine, that’s what.

But the bureaucrats, the ones who have the experience in drafting regulations, and the capacity to understand the research, and who had a great reputation for cleaning up America, will they even pay attention?

So, I can’t fathom that the president really has a plan (and even so it might go through the legislature), I don’t trust the legislature to get this right, and the bureaucrats are no-shows.

Regulation of greenhouse gases is the first, most basic step in tying pollution to a cost in the market.  If we assign pollution no cost, the market will never “correct itself” to stop destroying the ecosystem we know how to live in.  If we assign it the wrong cost, free marketeers will get to whine about interventionism, and the market will do insane things and freak everybody else out (see biofuels and food, rising costs of).

With these bozos vying (or not) for the chance at the prize, I don’t see a way for anyone to win.  They’re just thrashing around on the field, trying to figure out how to stand up.

The leaders of Myanmar’s Junta have formed a plan to reduce their country’s $600 million dependence on oil imports- reductions in oil subsidies sparked the popular uprising last fall- with biodiesel. They’re relying on hearty, drought-resistant jatropha, which produces nuts that may be processed into a vegetable oil, and which displaces no food crops. Since requiring farmers to plant them in unused spaces in 2006, much of the country has got jatropha growing wherever they can fit it, even in window boxes in the sometime-capital, Yangon. So far, so good, right? Energy security, no loss of food supplies, widespread public participation…

Except, with their busy schedule of oppressing their own people and making meaningless gestures toward democratic change, the Junta hasn’t actually gotten around to building the refineries necessary to turn the jatropha nuts into fuel. Whoops! What with having a centrally planned economy and all, you’d think they’d have remembered to actually plan.

The American government messed up biofuel by putting all its eggs into corn. The Myanmar Junta messed up by blustering their way into the project and not funding the necessary infrastructure. There are plenty of ways to do biofuel wrong- how many such predictable failures will we see before a government gets it right?

From recently inside my head, two quick follow-ups, then a review of external bits:

First, still on the fence about buying into Valentine’s day? Reuter’s has a dampening article on the child labor and human trafficking that go into producing much of the world’s cocoa, harsh chemicals dumped on roses and inhaled by farm workers, and those crazy war diamonds. Get off the fence and try something else! If the dear heart’s heart is set on chocolate, check out fair trade chocolate options. (My head? It is now salivating.)

Second, Mike Bloomberg is chastising the US government for promoting corn ethanol as a viable fuel. Sure, it’s interesting because I talked about it yesterday (sensing a pattern in this post?), but Bloomberg has also been flirting with running for president this year. Fred Thompson has already shown us the pitfalls of merely flirting with the idea, though, and the rash (yes, rash) of interesting primary action will probably make late entries into the race less interesting by comparison. But the loud green mayor of NY seems to want to make his voice heard on the national stage, and if he’s got a message like this, let’s hear some more.

Finally, let us turn our heads to my shampoo (masculine types are dismissed, unless they’re looking for tips on how to smell not so, well, dude-like).

I’ve been trying out a few ecofriendly shampoos, and it’s been a rough process. Literally. Whole Foods brand grapefruit shampoo and conditioner left my hair feeling unwashed and unconditioned. Plus, they smell sickly-sweet. Avalon Organics has a Lavender shampoo and conditioner that smell good- like real lavender, not the fake lavender scent. Their shampoo takes a lot of work to lather (it’s not my water’s fault) and their conditioner, while promising to nourish, leaves my hair brittle even when I let it sit a while. If you like the smell, the lack of animal testing, and the “100% vegetarian ingredients”, give the shampoo a try and avoid the conditioner- though the latter might work better for you if your hair is short or oily.

Really, though, you can skip the other two brands altogether and check out Trader Joe’s store brand. Their conditioner actually conditions- and I’ve got long, curly, slightly dry hair, so that’s a tough proposition. It’s $2 a bottle, smells fantastic, wasn’t tested on animals, and it’s got mostly organic ingredients. It does contain a couple parabens, which haven’t been proven to cause breast cancer in anything. Natural health people add an ominous “yet” to that statement. Avalon Organics consciously avoids them, but hey: Avalon Organics hasn’t produced a working conditioner yet, so. I’ll keep testing. (If you can’t wait for me to come up with another suggestion, try the comments at Green as a Thistle’s similar post.)

It should probably tell me something that my most popular post so far has been about Valentine’s day and looooove, but I’m going to ponder that later and talk about biofuels now. A new study by the University of Minnesota and the Nature Conservancy adds up the total life cycle impact of crop biofuels- like corn and whatever else is grown specifically on converted or agricultural land to make fuel, not food- is actually worse than fossil fuels in terms of carbon production. Yup, apparently ethanol is bad (please remove corn subsidies already, Washington?).

So if biofuels- or at least the ones we’re growing now- are such a bad idea, how come we didn’t notice before? Partly it was due to a failure to predict the effect of converting huge areas of land from food production to fuel production- drives up food prices worldwide, and invokes deforestation and land clearing to create new agricultural land to grow more of the displaced food crops or the new fuel crops- which tend to be heavily subsidized, thus very profitable.

The NYT article on the studies doesn’t heavily emphasize the different types of biofuels used as energy resources, so it’s easy to come away with the impression that all biofuels are bad.  Not so! The Nature Conservency interviews an author on the paper, Joe Fargione:

Although there is no silver bullet to solve climate change, there are many silver BBs. Biofuels can be a silver BB if produced without requiring additional land to be converted from native habitats to agriculture. For example, biofuels can be made from waste from agriculture and forests, and from native grasses and woody biomass grown on marginal lands unsuitable for crop production.

We not only have to consider how we produce biomass, but how we convert it to energy. Producing liquid transportation fuels may not be the most efficient way to use the energy contained in biomass.

I’ve added my emphasis. Europe is trying to fix the newly-discovered ill effects of their plans to increase biofuel use by maintaining that it must not come from former rainforests, and no word on how the US will change it’s recently passed ethanol provisions in the 2007 Energy Bill. Energy policy should go back to the drawing board, to maximize research funding for waste biofuels, and seriously, no more corn ethanol subsidies, not even if you call it a tax cut! Pretty please?

Whenever I discuss politics, I tend to overuse terms like “shameful” and “ludicrous”, and to spit while I talk. I don’t know of any way to spit through this blog, so consider yourself lucky while I discuss the shameful and ludicrous decisions those folks in Washington are making on the new energy bill.

This bill has become a catch-all for energy legislation: seems like Mr. Bush decided that “coal” was the future about 6 years ago and Congress hasn’t made much energy progress since then. It doesn’t have a cool name or moniker, it’s just the “Energy Bill”. So we’ve got renewable energy, biofuels, tax increases or tax cut reductions (they call it different things in different articles) for oil companies, and fuel efficiency standards for auto companies all being debated together. There must be some good reason why they lumped it all in, because surely it’d be faster to get meaningful deals on all of these issues if they were debated separately, but maybe I missed that part of the Schoolhouse Rock.

Something, bruised and tattered, limped out of the House earlier this week, shied away from a veto threat, and threw itself upon the mercy of the Senate. Carnage ensued, and now the bloody remains are being sent back to the House to see if they approve (”I wonder who that sad little scrap of paper is”, indeed). Basically, what’s left is:

1) CAFE standards. Average vehicle mileage will rise to 35mpg by 2020. Really now, our fuel efficiency standards are at 1975 levels, and even the Chinese have more restrictive fuel efficiency ratings. This raise is not at all a hardship to the auto industry, who fight it tooth and nail and yet advertise their “earth-friendliness” with virescent logos and promises of hybrids and electrics and fuel cell research they could make into cars for us any year now. It’s about time, and I bet in a couple years people will come to see 35 by 2020 as the baby step it is.

2) Subsidies for corn-based and a few other biofuels, with requirements that production of these be increased 7-fold by 2022. Considering how much harm corn ethanol subsidies have already directly caused, I have no idea why this is a good idea. I agree on this point with the Oil industry. It makes worlds of sense to mandate biofuel production, but not to require it from specific sources.

What’s not there anymore:

1) Tax increases/reduction of cuts for oil companies. It’s very precious that Democrats are the only ones making efforts at fiscal responsibility these days: the tax revenue was going to help pay for some of these changes. Republicans will have none of it, because those poor oil companies need every cent of their record profits to look for more oil to sell us to make more record profits.  Dems won’t insist on the flashes of fiscal responsibility, of course- they’re not in a position to insist upon much these days.   I will digress a minute to ask when Republicans lost their ability to make the choices necessary to be fiscally responsible. No, Bush refusing to spend money on domestic issues and writing a blank check to the Defense Department doesn’t count (literally). Claim your party still is all you like, but the way your people in DC are voting speaks louder than you. Come on, reclaim your heritage! Democrats are stealing all your credibility! For shame. Whatever, it’s not like this bill is making expensive, real changes anyway, and I’m sure our credit is still good somewhere. We’ll invoke the money somehow.

2) Incentives for renewable energy development (wind, solar, geothermal, magic, etc.). It’s just a waste of voting time to pass an Energy Bill without these, but apparently the Senate and the White House don’t like the idea. The omnibus spending bill lurching it’s way through Congress does have a little salve for this (what is it doing there?):

The agreement, to be included in a broad government spending bill, would authorize the Energy Department to guarantee loans for various energy projects, making financing far easier.

The agreement would guarantee loans of up to $25 billion for new nuclear plants and $2 billion for a uranium enrichment plant, something those industries had been avidly seeking. It would also provide guarantees of up to $10 billion for renewable energy projects, $10 billion for plants to turn coal into liquid vehicle fuel and $2 billion to turn coal into natural gas.

Ah, so it’s spending on nuclear power and look! There’s coal again! Sheesh. There’s a nod to renewables, at least.

So the bill doesn’t do much good, props up a few bad ideas, is unfunded anyway, and Bush still might veto it. I continue to be underwhelmed, Government.

Ludicrous.

As a reminder that we’re not doomed yet, here are a couple of articles on large investments in research and development in clean technology. Both are from Wired.

First, especially to please the conservative/free market types, Formula One car racing is requiring its teams to make their cars more energy efficient and look for alternative sources of power, by banning engine development for the 2008-2018 seasons. Hybrid technologies, alternative fuels, and recapture of heat and exhaust to be converted to power are some of the systems to be developed to make the race cars racier in the future. Formula One is to the world like NASCAR is to Middle America, it would seem, and they’re sponsored by some major car companies to demonstrate cutting-edge technology, which then quickly trickles down into the everyday-driver market. This could have a pretty fantastic impact on the efficiency of cars available to the public, and it’s a great demonstration that efficient cars aren’t lame, for those more interested in smoking other cars at stoplights than conservation.

For those interested in the viability of government investment in research and development of new technology, Russia’s $5 billion investment in a state nanotechnology center is worth watching. Nanotech is good for lots of things (everything, according to those involved in nanotech research), but the director of the facility Mikhail Kovalchuk is mostly interested in the applications of his research on efficiency and clean energy technologies. Even more exciting, since Russia’s budget surplus that allows them to make this investment is mostly due to their incredible gains in the oil and natural gas markets (holding Eastern Europe over the barrel, har). The article points out that this investment is at least in part meant to stave off the effects of the certain collapse of the fossil fuel economy on Russia’s economy.

This article from the International Herald Tribune says it all, quite succinctly. Relying on corn as the main source of biofuel is going to cause a lot more problems than it solves, and the sick twist of tariffs, subsidies, and tax breaks is distorting the real impact of political decisions to push corn-based ethanol production as The New Way to drive cars. I’m excited about biofuels, and one day soon they will make economic sense: especially the really efficient ones that we don’t also need to eat, export, and feed to our livestock. Check out the first picture (then the rest, it’s neat stuff) in this slideshow from Wired magazine. Green slime+water+sun+CO2=ethanol. Sounds so simple- maybe it can get off the ground and to consumers without all that government price fixing.