Virescent

Relations between Russia and Britain have been strained for over a year now, what with all the radioactive poisonings and art shows and cultural office tussles, but now the Russian government is upping the ante. The ministry for Natural Resources, Rosprirodnadzor (in the long tradition of awesome Russian names) announced an environmental inquiry into the practices of British Petroleum’s operation at Samotlor oil field late last week. Production at that field alone accounts for about 1/4th of BPs oil production.

Soviet oil production was never know for its responsible environmental practices, and a conglomerate was formed in 2003 with BP to improve the widespread leaks and groundwater contamination already at the Siberian site. But Russia has been trying to consolidate oil production under their nationally-controlled Gazprom, and things aren’t looking good for BPs investment. In 2006, the same environmental inquiries were made into another foreign-run oil field in Russia:

In 2006, the same Russian environmental agency threatened Royal Dutch Shell with multibillion-dollar fines in a months-long campaign that led to Shell’s selling a controlling stake of its Sakhalin Island oil and gas development to Gazprom.

After Gazprom bought the stake, the agency dropped its environmental complaints and work continued.

The same inspector in the Shell situation, Oleg L. Mitvol, the agency’s deputy director, was appointed to lead the investigation at TNK-BP’s Samotlor field, according to the statement.

So.  Hurrah for the concept of environmental enforcement, I guess.  But Russia is just using “concern for the environment” as a shield in their quest to do whatever they feel like.  I admire them for their skill in doing whatever they, like, actually- it makes keeping up with international events that much more scary, entertaining, and bizarre.  But it’s discouraging to open an article on the environmental failings of Big Oil and sympathize with Big Oil after you read the details.  Sure, their site might be a mess, but I bet it’s not much worse than any other oil field in the former USSR.  Russia makes a mockery of environmental protections.  I guess it’s what’s left to do, after they’ve made such a mockery of open democracy and the rule of law.

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?

I can take a deep breathe and come back to post regularly now, since I finally only have one apartment again, and most of my boxes are empty and their contents distributed. It’s been a long move, and I’m very glad it’s over. I’ll give you a summary along with the six-month review and March monthly goal I owe you, but not yet.

Tonight, you get a few links to stories from the past week I’ve been itching to put up for days. Guiding theme is legislative.

The EPA released their actual reason for denying a waiver to California and about 16 (or maybe 18, depending on which article you read) other states so that they may pass their own emissions laws, the same week as memos from the EPA’s staff opposing the decision were made public. The agency said in December that they’d deny the waiver, for reasons that would be forthcoming. After over two months, they’ve come up with

“While I find that the conditions related to global climate change in California are substantial, they are not sufficiently different from conditions in the nation as a whole to justify separate state standards,” Johnson [the EPA head] wrote.

The policy director for the National Resources Defense Council called that statement “both factually and legally wrong”. Johnson’s own EPA agrees with the NRDC.

“It is obvious to me that there is no legal or technical justification for denying this,” Margo Oge, director of the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, warned in talking points prepared for a meeting with Johnson in October 2007.

While the EPA is taking their bold, defenseless move, the House has passed a bill with a much less certain future. A plan to shift funding to renewable energy resources, paid for by removing tax breaks given to oil and gas companies, passed the House Wednesday. No idea on when the Senate will get to it, but Bush has of course threatened a veto. After all, American oil companies (who are hitting year after year of record profits- not just records for them, but records for any American business ever- and record profits, not just record income, straight-up profits) are suffering badly, and may not survive much longer without those tax breaks. Limping along, suspended by a thread, suffocating under the weight of their own cash, etc. You know how it is. The NYT article on the House bill highlights Republican reasons for opposing it (besides the poor, poor oil companies) (ok, “poor” is a bad word choice), and what doesn’t boil down to “taxes==evil” goes along the lines of “energy prices are high enough, and this will increase our dependence on foreign energy supplies”. I’ll go ahead and call that laughable, considering how dependent on foreign oil resources we already are, and considering that the main gist of the bill is to shift energy production to sources that Americans control, on US soil. Let’s see how the Senate takes the idea before we get all excited, though.

And in a Wired piece, recycling at the Obama campaign! Not speeches (har-dee-har), no, but campaign materials themselves. For those of us who’ve been hankering after a teeshirt, you know that the Obama campaign is trying to fill such a huge demand for their merch that their orders are being delayed by weeks, and the ObamaCycle site is emerging as the most effective way to get posters where they’re needed fast. Considering the political litter all over our corner of Alexandria, I hope more campaigns pick up the idea. Of course, since total inundation seems to be the general goal of the posters, perhaps the best I can hope for is that all those signs end up in a recycling pile by November.

Mine was pretty good, thanks! The Gentleman Friend and I decided to do our celebrating tomorrow- we’re cooking together.  A movie may or may not be involved. Tonight, I can get ready for my construction site inspection (architecture school field trips are sweet) and munch on the loaf of bread the GF baked me earlier this week.

In honor of both the GF and the day, here’s an article on the more sustainable flower farms in Colombia (his country of extraction, more or less). They don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day so much- instead, Feb 14th is the “International Day of Flower Workers”, since about 100,000 Colombians grow about a billion dollars worth of flowers for export every year. A new program called “Floraverde” is providing these flower farms with a chance to certify themselves in social standards for their workers and environmental standards for their growing operation- and it’s catching on. They’re still working on the whole right to organize labor thing, but over 40% of their farms are now certified with the program since 2003, or are in the process of certification.

I’m excited about the Valentine’s Day when my Gentleman Friend can buy me flowers and know that he’s buying a product that wasn’t grown with dangerous chemical pesticides, and wasn’t transported long distances to him by dirty fuels, and the proceeds of which purchase go back to be invested with the people who produced them in the first place, to help grow everybody’s economy. For now, I’m happier without them. Well, ok, sometimes they do help when he’s got some explaining to do, but still.

Let me know how sustainably yours went!

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?

Abu Dhabi announced plans for a $15bn state investment in clean energy technologies, including the world’s largest hydrogen plant and a new sustainable city. All this while I was dumping my closets on the floor yesterday in a search for sustainability. It’s thrilling that the capital of the UAE, whose fantastic wealth is based squarely on oil and natural gas deposits, is the one taking this huge, important, exciting step. After all, they have the money to burn- but their government also understands that dependency on oil is not a desirable political or economic strategy.

In a moment of dramatic irony, Bush visited the sustainable city last week and thought it was just great. Maybe if the UAE doesn’t need all that oil now, they’ll sell it to us cheap! Maureen Dowd put it well:

You know you’re in trouble when your Middle East oil pump is greener than you are.

You probably heard that the Bush administration decided to open Alaskan oilfields for exploratory drilling last year, and then declared that the licenses for drilling would go on sale on Feb. 6th of this year. Meanwhile, the same department (Interior) making the drilling sale decisions has also stalled a call on whether or not polar bears are a threatened species- topical, because about 16,000 of them live in the same area that will be put up for sale. A house committee today advised the department to classify the bears before the sale, though I have no idea if that’s a binding command.

“Rushing to allow drilling in polar bear habitat before protecting the bear would be the epitome of this administration’s backward energy policy, a policy of drill first and ask questions later,” Rep. Ed Markey said at a hearing of the House (of Representatives) Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, which he chairs.

An administration official in charge of investigating the endangered status of the bear isn’t arguing.

Hall has previously acknowledged there is no substantial scientific uncertainty, as defined under the Endangered Species Act, about the polar bear case. He said the volume of material from scientists and public hearings caused the delay in making the decision on whether to list the bear as threatened.

Ah, so it’s the backlog, not the facts, that prevent the administration from going forward with the assessment. I see.

Polar bears are scientifically proven to be adorable, especially when they are branded and marketed, as Berlin’s zoo’s Knut has shown. Now that Das Eisbaer is big enough to look more like one of those head-ripping-off bears instead of an awkward fluff ball, his star might be fading. Fortunately the Nuernberg Zoo is filling the gap with Flocke, the one cub rescued from a total of three born to two different mothers. One mother ate her two babies, and Flocke looked to be in similar danger from her own mother, so she’s being hand-reared now. Adorable!

Just as those squeezable stuffed Knuts are a proxy for the real predatory, baby-eating deal, the objection to beginning drilling in Alaska because of polar bear populations is a proxy for larger questions on global warming and fossil fuel use. Sad, that these bears are projected to die because of melting sea ice due to global warming caused in significant part by fossil fuel emissions, and we’re invading their homeland to drill for more fossil fuels to burn to create emissions to, well, you know. The drilling will go ahead with an estimated 1/3-1/2 chance of an oil spill, according to the participating drilling companies. Last time I checked in real places, this isn’t an acceptable rate of failure, but it’ll do for drilling in wildlife refuges!

The drilling will reduce our dependence on foreign oil which I think is great, but it won’t do a lick to reduce our dependence on oil, which I find to be totally lame, and it puts me off the whole idea. You may argue that renewable energy sources are just too expensive to substitute right now, and that’s correct, and it will continue to be correct until we actually invest serious time, money, and government attention in those sources. There’s a fun catch-22 for anyone who sees the irony in “free” markets.

Anyway, fuzzy as bears are, I think this story would be more compelling for me personally if penguins were threatened. They don’t eat their babies, but they do vomit in their mouths! Awwwww!

A thought-exercise: An Indian company, Tata, has developed a super-cheap small car. Are we pleased?

Pro: The car costs less than $3000.

Con: That’s still more than 3 years pay at average Indian wages.

Pro: It’s safer than a motorcycle.

Con: It’s not much safer.

Pro: It’s got relatively low emissions- a byproduct of tiny.

Con: It’s not got the technology to keep emissions low after actual road use.

Pro: It will take up less space in a traffic jam.

Con: More people able to afford small car-> more small cars on the roads-> more traffic jams.

With dreams of being Model-T revolutionary, the Tata’s people car could do much for the new middle class in developing countries. Like, it could give them access to a car. A car engineered to the least expensive possible standard of functionality- the steering shaft is hollow, and at speeds over 45 mph, the wheel bearings wear quickly (great, so it’s a disposable car?). No worries about it being unleashed on American roads- it wouldn’t meet our safety or environmental regulations. And in a couple years, when India has environmental and car safety regulations of it’s very own, it probably won’t meet them, either. In the US, safety requirements cost generally add $2500 to the cost of making a car- about double the People’s car price.

Sure, it sounds hypocritical to wish that developing countries not develop into the same gas-quaffing, road warrioring, driving maniacs that the US already has become. Without widespread usable public transportation, most of the US isn’t left a choice. Owning a car has becomes a basic need, to work and get groceries and go anywhere. In most of the developing world, though, it remains a status symbol. I’m not bemoaning the role of efficient transportation in development- a car certainly goes faster than a donkey or a bike- I’m just saying, personal cars aren’t the most efficient method of transport, and if countries develop in a manner dependent upon them, they’ll only trap themselves in the same nasty emissions and oil-dependency cycle we’ve gotten ourselves into.

The US should try and set an example by, say, developing a viable train system, or encouraging investment in mass transit in cities- make a metro pass a status symbol. Or maybe we could go with the Cadillac flow, and make clean cars the new status symbol. Pardon me, while I covet the Provoq.

Really, though: Hey, India, we’re not a great example. Try something else.

First work day of the year, sitting quietly in the office thinking this is going to be good, we can handle 2008, let’s have a sandwich, then fwap (or ka-ching?), oil hits $100 and here we go.  Gets the ol’ juices pumping, that’s for sure!  Sure, we’ve been expecting it for months, but to be rewarded a mere half-day into 2008 trading- well.  I will take it as an omen- this year is going to deliver.

(Deliver what?  Who knows!  But it’s coming!)

That word starts to look weird when it’s typed over and over, but it’s somehow not as weird as basing a global economy on a non-renewable, limited resource. To have been at those meetings! “We don’t know how much we’ve got or where it is, but instead of seriously considering other options, let’s just go ahead and rely almost solely on this as our source of energy for everybody! Mua ha ha ha ha!”

I’m sure you’ve heard the economic hand-wringing (not the Invisible Hand though, he’s been busy) over high oil prices recently. $100 oil! Oh Noes! We did or did not see this coming! It will now go up or maybe down! Curious about why the price is so far up? Blame speculators, the Middle East, weather in oil fields, weather in shipping lanes, lack of refinery production, OPEC’s stonewalling, international tensions, international distribution of production and refining capacity, increase in demand, underproduction, overproduction- blame whatever you want, chances are it’s been blamed for a change in oil prices before. An article in the NYT characterizes this new “energy crisis” as fundamentally different from the ones in the 1970s, since it’s mostly driven by an increase in demand, and not a sudden decrease in supply. It certainly is making things interesting internationally- The IHT summarizes some exciting developments stemming from oil prices: Russia, Angola, and Hugo Chavez win, and China and India lose. US dependency on imported oil is tactfully not mentioned.

If oil prices keep going up, it’s going to hit importing nations, developing nations and consumers who enjoy having heat in winter and enough gas to get to work hard. The International Energy Agency (summarized at Wired) reports that demand for energy is rising and is only going to rise further, given the economic growth of gigantor countries like China and India. This will be a wonderful test of the free market: for economic, social, political, security, environmental, and plain common sense reasons, we absolutely cannot rely on everybody’s favorite limited resource for energy anymore. Will business deliver us from oil with advancements in clean energy technology, or will we face disastrous economic setbacks for the least cushioned people and international turmOil?

Small steps signal salvation- Arab Gulf businessmen are pouring oil money into clean technology. But until companies see imminent collapse, corporations become visionaries, or some prescient governing body (oxymoron?) steps in, consumers will be forced to care about the price of oil.