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Yesterday India and China notified the United Nations that they would join the climate deal created at December's climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

(Relive the fun with OnEarth's Copenhagen Climate Talks coverage.)

The Associated Press reports that "[A] one-sentence note from China's top climate change negotiator, Su Wei, authorized the addition of China to the list attached to the nonbinding accord brokered by President Barack Obama in the final hours of the December climate change summit in the Danish capital.

"India sent a note on Monday that it 'stands by the contents of the accord.'"

Among the world's top greenhouse gas polluters, with fast-growing industrial and consumer economies, it was crucial that China and India accept the Copenhagen pact. 
They're the last of the world's major economies to become parties to the accord, joining around 100 other nations in accepting the deal.  

The legally-toothless agreement pledges to keep global mean temperature increases from pre-industrial levels at or below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius).

The pact also commits the world's richest industrial nations to providing $100-odd billion in climate-change-related aid to poorer developing nations. The funding would go to helping these countries leapfrog into low-carbon economic development, as well as adapt to changing climate and weather conditions. 

For all that they're good news, China and India's moves don't yet answer the biggest open questions in international climate politics: 

It remains to be seen whether broad international buy-in to the Copenhagen Accord will get major emitters to aim for the targets they defined for cutting heat-trapping greenhouse gas pollution.  Or whether they'll allow transparent, international monitoring of their reduction and mitigation efforts, a key demand of developing nations by the Obama administration. 

It's also hard to gauge what impact this will have on the chances of creating a legally binding agreement at November's international climate talks in Mexico.

But China and India's participation in Copenhagen may weaken one argument by climate-challenged senators: that the US would be taking an economic hit if it cut emissions while these two up-and-coming economic powerhouses stood off to the side.

That in turn could undergird efforts by the Obama administration, as well supportive lawmakers, to get decent climate and energy policy reform through the Senate.  

The first commitment period for cutting greenhouse gas pollution under 1997's Kyoto Accord ends in 2012. Without establishing new targets, as well as internationally-accepted means and measures for meeting them, both governments and industries will find it hard to plan effective responses to climate change.

Which is more or less another way of saying that they'll find it even easier to put off taking politically controversial actions to re-stabilize the climate, as well as potentially far-reaching and costly steps to adapt to the changes already under way.

Also read: India Increases National Action on Climate Change, on NRDC's advocacy blog Switchboard

Video: The Daily Show, Wednesday February 10, 2010: "Unusually Large Snowstorm -- Aasif Mandvi freezes in New York, Sam Bee feels the heat in Australia, and Jason Jones reports on the darkness everywhere."

Forgive us for indulging in a little self-promotion here, but OnEarth has just been nominated for TreeHugger's Best of Green Awards in the category of best political website.

That seemed a little odd to us at first -- we're journalists here, not politicians -- but considering who else is in the category, we're in very good company: Andy Revkin's Dot Earth, Mother Jones' Blue Marble, and Joe Romm's Climate Progress. Those are some of the must-reads for environmental news and commentary online, so we're quite happy to be included in that group.

Over the past six months or so, we've worked hard to make onearth.org a worthy online companion for NRDC's award-winning print magazine. We're digging up fascinating stories, hiring great writers to tell them, and providing perspective and commentary from bloggers and correspondents. We've also expanded our reviews section and produced more videos, slideshows, and interactive features. We're working on a redesign right now that will make it all more user-friendly and inviting.

We're pleased that TreeHugger and its readers have recognized our hard work. As they say, it really is an honor to be nominated -- but we'd also love your votes to help us win. (NRDC has also been nominated for "Best Watchdog.") Support us here!

And if you're pleased with what we've been doing, we hope you'll sign up for our new email newsletter, which will send OnEarth updates straight to your inbox (but not too many, we promise -- our inboxes are overflowing, too).

Yes, the resurgence of the "climate-deniers" -- like weeds, or zombies -- is discouraging. But this resistance to scientific knowledge has a long history in the United States. Consider the enduring revolt by many conservative fundamentalists against Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Quick recap: Darwin's Origin of Species was published in 1859. The landmark Scopes trial (the basis for the play and the film, Inherit the Wind) took place in 1925 in the state of Tennessee, which sought to bar the teaching of evolution in its public schools. Fast forward 80 years: the dispute over the validity of evolutionary theory has infamously (embarrassingly) been carried into the 21st century by, among others, the Kansas State Board of Education, the Dover, Pennsylvania, school board, and now, according to The New York Times, state capitols in Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Texas.

It appears that these two strains of deniers -- those questioning climate change and evolution -- have joined forces to supplant scientific knowledge with religious zeal. Local politicians and certain conservative Christian organizations are categorizing both climate change and evolution as merely "theories" that should be presented to schoolchildren alongside alternative explanations.

Of course, evolution is a "theory" only in the formal, scientific sense: that is, "a well-substantiated explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can incorporate laws, hypotheses and facts," as was pointed out by the curators of the 2006 Darwin exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. This is in contrast to the more colloquial meaning of the word:  "an untested hunch, or a guess without supporting evidence."

If one of the most well-documented theories in the annals of science -- a foundation of modern intellectual thought and of countless advances in the natural sciences -- can be questioned over the course of 151 years, should we really be shocked that the overwhelming evidence of human-induced climate change would also be disputed? This is especially true when you consider that the prevailing scientific consensus on climate change carries huge implications for powerful industries and entrenched economic and political stakeholders, who reap benefits -- in the short term, at least -- by fanning the flames of the Anti-Science/Anti-Knowledge movement in the United States.

None of this offers much consolation, but it does provide some historical perspective. Still, the basic challenge remains: how do we as a society enlighten -- or perhaps marginalize -- those who marginalize science, so that rational minds can prevail? Reverend Jim Ball, the senior director for climate programs at the Evangelical Environmental Network, who has worked with evangelical leaders and adherents to address climate change sensibly, told the Times that this group of religiously motivated skeptics "already feels like scientists are attacking their faith and calling them idiots." 

The question, then, may be: How do we bridge this deep cultural divide in order to benefit the planet and all God's creatures who inhabit it?

A Katrina-like winter storm tore through parts of Western Europe early Sunday morning, killing over 60 people. Most of the dead are from Atlantic coastal France, where ( Per Agence France-Presse) winter storm Xynthia's 93-mile-an-hour winds and 26-foot waves hit the coast so ferociously that they breached many of the region's aging sea levees.

Between around 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. local time on Sunday, the sea surged at least 1,600 feet inland. Streets were flooded so fast that many people didn't have time to escape before their homes were inundated.

So no more lonely hearts for us: France joins the USA in being an industrialized nation where some combination of factors -- politics, money, inertia, carelessness? -- has left a coastal population fatally vulnerable to extreme weather.

Carolyn Bucley of Persac, France wrote in to the BBC News on Sunday that she had "spent the whole evening from 2100 (9:00 pm) right through to 0800 this morning battening down anything that moved...[A]round us, many trees have been uprooted and some people have lost roof tiles. Though thankfully, in our region, there have been no injuries reported. But it was the worst storm I have ever encountered."

Reader Mike Jones wrote in from the French Pyrenees that "Bagneres de Luchon has been hit extremely hard...The town's ski resort, Superbagneres, was evacuated and today resembles a war zone. The town's parks are decimated with trees that have stood for 100 years being ripped out of the ground."

As of Tuesday's edition of The Toronto Star, a million French were without power, at least 51 were known dead, and rescue workers were still traveling in boats through dozens of underwater neighborhoors, trying to find survivors trapped in their homes:

About half the French death toll...was attributed to the breach of the sea wall off the coastal town of L'Aiguillon-sur-Mer, known for its shellfish farms.

Floodwaters also submerged streets in L'Ile de Re, a chic resort island of colourful ports, charming cottages and bike paths. Broken-off concrete blocks from a shattered sea wall lay strewn about one of the island's beaches.

The spokesman for France's emergency services, Lt.-Col. Patrick Vailli, said nine people were still missing and scores more were wounded. Dozens of neighbourhoods were under water, and hundreds of houses were destroyed or damaged...

In the southwestern French town of La Faute-sur-Mer, firefighters evacuated stranded residents by boat Monday and car roofs just peeked out above the floodwaters

"We have to ask how in France, in the 21st century, families can be surprised in their sleep and drown in their homes," [French Prime Minister Nicholas] Sarkozy said.

Can the causes of any one storm be attributed to climate change? The scientifically precise answer is 'no, not at this point in time.'

We can look back now at temperature records collected over the past several decades, and see the distinct and unusual rise in the global mean temperature. In a decade or two we'll be able to look back and see if a pattern of more extreme storms was established over the early 21st century.

With this due degree of uncertainly established, it's worth remembering that extreme storms like Katrina and now Xynthia have been anticipated in climate change research. One likely reason is that as the global mean temperature rises, more moisture evaporates off the surface of the ocean into the atmosphere. Extra moist is great for cake, but it's problematic in terms of weather, since hurricanes and cyclones draw power from warm moisture in the air. As Discovery News' John Cox writes about Xynthia,

What gave the storm such destructive power and such prodigious rains was the confluence of two strikingly different air masses -- a wave of cold, relatively dry air that is typical of the North Atlantic and a massive, concentrated flow of unusually warm moisture from the Tropics.

Piled up against the African coast in the eastern Atlantic is a wedge of sea surface temperatures that are roughly 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit above average that is spread all the way to South America. This North Atlantic storm formed far enough south to entrain this plume of extra warm moisture. The southwest-to-northeast trajectory of this plume suggests what researchers have been calling an "atmospheric river," a tropical firehose that is capable of causing flooding just about anywhere it hits the ground.

Tropical meteorologist Jeff Masters, in his Weather Underground blog on the subject, notes that "total precipitable water" in this plume was up to 300 percent above average.

Another Katrina flashback: It was the human factor that made Xynthia so lethal. The sea walls meant to protect these French towns failed because they were "too low, in severe disrepair, or reportedly dating from the era of Napoleon," according to Associated Press reporters.

And then there's over-development in flood zones: "[Observers] also cite the new houses cropping up behind them, tantalizingly close to the country's poorly protected but much beloved shoreline."

Image: "L'Aiguillon, Vendée, tempête Xynthia, 01/03/2010". Via Planete Vivant (Marie Sophie) on flickr

You probably don't give too much thought to coal ash.

You might want to change that.

The USA gets half its electricity from coal, produced by about 600 power plants , each of which produces about 325,000 tons of coal combustion waste (CCW), composed of fly ash, bottom ash, and scrubber slurry. This is nasty stuff. Industry tells us that it's not very harmful, but then you read the articles about the horrible birth defects and environmental consequences to the third world locations, unlucky enough to have a couple of shiploads dumped on them.

CCW contains a slew of nasties like arsenic, mercury, chromium, and cadmium, which tend to blow around and leach out into the water table (oops, don't drink that!)

Thank God the EPA hasn't recognized it for the toxic waste that it is, because the coal burners would have to treat it as such, which would be expensive {shudders.}

Did I mention that since the stuff is so ubiquitous, and after all, non-toxic, that we are mixing it in with wall board and concrete. A little mercury in your sheet rock shouldn't bother you, right?

Last year, the EPA released a list of coal ash storage sites that would pose a grave danger to the public if they failed (like the one in Tennessee did last Christmas, largest industrial disaster in US history!) Didn't hear about it?

I've been dying to shoot the "EPA 44" since the list was released. Got them all plugged in to my GPS.

Rumor has it that the Obama crew will review the regulations this week, and my sources tell me there are no great pictures that tell the story graphically. Sounds like a bugle call to me, better call in the cavalry: SouthWings. Twelve of the EPA list are in NC, the SW stomping ground.

SouthWings has been my partner on the Coal Ash project for years, and they jumped right on board to go again. The weather looks good for the target region for today, so... all systems go!

Tough it's a bit short notice, the spontaneity allows me to have pretty favorable odds with the weather. Could work.

You can see the first set of pictures from the Coal Ash project here.

If you're one of the hundreds of thousands of American birders, The American Bird Conservancy (ABC) has a suggestion for your summer vacation: spend your time and money investing in "conservation birding." You can see some of the most spectactular birds in the Americas (like the Yellow-scarfed Tanager, above) while helping to prevent their extinction.

ABC has partnered with bird conservation organizations in a dozen countries to set up thirty-six preserves covering a quarter-million acres of unique and critical bird habitat for more than 2,000 species. Eighteen of the preserves offer on-site lodging.

"Visiting birders can provide a source of direct financial support to the reserves," said Mike Parr, VP of ABC, at the project's recent unveiling, "helping them become self-sufficient and sustainable in the long-term."

A Birding Portal

Part of the project includes a resource-rich website, www.conservationbirding.org. From that site, you can read details about and see photographs of many of the reserves, browse sample itineraries, download a file that shows birding routes when used with Google Earth, and watch a covey of amazing videos (rookery? clutch? gulp? charm?) like the one below.

 

 

Eighteen of the conservation birding preserves are listed as key preservation sites by the the global Alliance for Zero Extinction. These areas have been singled out as extinction "hotspots," where "species are in imminent danger of disappearing."

Do You Love Birds?

The NRDC does. That's why it has worked with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to create a website/blog devoted entirely to our feathered friends, at WeLoveBirds. The site is designed as an online meeting-place for birders to share information, photos and just, well, flock together.

There's a gorgeous slide show on the home page, a forum for asking technical questions about birding equipment ("What specs should we look for" in a digital SLR camera used for capturing images of birds, is the most recent question), and links to live "Nest Cams" across the country. (As I write, I'm inordinately mesmerized by a pair of nearly motionless Barn Owls hunkering down to stay warm -- it's 49°-- in a nest in Italy, Texas.)

Favorite Bird App

To wrap up this week in birding, the New York Times cooperated by recently naming BirdsEye their "Gadgetwise App of the Week."

Of course the app include photos of nearly a thousand birds in the U.S. and Canada (and recordings of most of their songs), along with text describing their habits, range, etc.

What really sets BirdsEye apart is its tracking capability. Because it streams information from Cornell Lab's eBird program, you can see, instantly, where different bird species have been cited. Or check your location to see which birds are migrating through your "backyard.

No word yet on when a similar app will be available for use in the Conservation Birding preserves. Such a program might not be terribly helpful there, anyway. On two recent ABC-sponsored trips, participants spotted bird species that were new to science.

 

Judging from some of the backchannel chitchat I'm encountering, we environmental journalists are hitting our collective head against a wall over the near-deafening yawp from global warming deniers.

The ratio of science-literate to science-challenged responses in our blog comments, email, and in-baskets is so unbalanced, the scale is broken. And mainstream reporting on climate change remains stuck in a time warp, where a few big snowstorms during one winter on one small part of a big continent, undercut the veracity of years upon years of recorded temperature increases across the globe.

It's tempting to become dispirited about reporting on climate change. What's driving this hostility and inattention to facts?

To answer that question, journalists -- at least the ones who care about being effective on the job -- often look for clues in the psychology or intellect of the reader. Not surprising, since our goal is to present well-sourced facts in as engaging a manner possible, to help readers understand and act upon the issues most important to them and to society.  If we're getting our jobs done right (and we're always asking ourselves that, too), then the problem must be on the receiving end.

But poor grasp of science cannot be all that's at work here, since apparently science illiteracy is the norm in the US. (A factor that hasn't impeded all sorts of environmental and health policy reforms based on better scientific understanding as well as social progress.)

Even though the number of science literate citizens has tripled in the past two decades, it's still only 28% of the nation, reports Janet Raloff of Science News. Further, she notes, only one European nation's rate of science literacy exceeds that of the US: Sweden.

Despite that, public sentiment across the European Union nations seems firmly in favor of climate action.

US climate change skepticism can't just be a result of widespread paranoia, either, since global warming deniers are far from unique in the annals of pseudo-science conspiracy theories. UFO obsessives, chemtrail conspiracists, and free energy suppression believers also are sure that they have ferreted out a truth millions of others fail to perceive. Like climate change deniers, they all privilege sketchy sources of data and information over more coherent, verifiable, mainstream sources.  And they're convinced that the government and scientists are in cahoots to hide information from the public, probably to get across some sort of social domination scheme.  (This despite constant affirmations in the news that both politics and science are practically blood sports, rife with ambition and competition among participants.)

So why do these other pseudo-science conspiracists remain on the lunatic fringe, while climate change deniers have become all but middle-of-the-road?

Here's the major difference between them: there's not a lot of money to be made confusing the public about whether alien spaceships or perpetual motion are real. But CO2-intensive industries, such as oil, coal, and gas, have a lot to lose in the short term from climate, energy, and transportation policy reforms that cap and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

So or the past 15 to 20-odd years -- and this is not particularly new information -- they have actively poured funding into efforts that promote skepticism about global warming. In his book Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming, James Hoggan calls this effort "institutionalizing uncertainty."

The public broadcasting series Frontline has aired two excellent reports touching on these efforts to upend US climate action, which you can view online: 2007's Hot Politics, which looks in depth at the climate change denial "industry," and 2008's Heat, on market responses to the changing climate.

The energy sector pumps tens of millions of dollars into lobbying political officials. Greenwire has reported that in 2009, electric utilities spent $144.4 million for lobby efforts. The oil and gas industries spent $168.4 milion to influence the fate of climate and energy legislation in Congress (as well as tax legislation, health care, and government spending). That's upwards of 20% more than they spent in 2008.

By law, corporations have to report on how much they spend to lobby politicians. It's more difficult to track down political spending via other outlets, such as consulting and public relations fees. But given the enormous sums spent on lobbying, it seems reasonable to assume that there's a lot of fossil energy money sloshing around in these grey zones. And there are some facts to back that up: As Politico reported last year, the coal-industry-backed American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity paid close to $1 million to a public relations/lobby firm to create fake grassroots ("astroturf") opposition to federal climate and energy policy reform.

Now, influence spending by clean energy companies surged as well in 2009 -- up about 36% from the year before, according to Greenwire. Still, it added up to a mere $30.1 million. Green groups spent only around $22.5 million lobbying on energy and climate issues.  This combined $52.6 million is still only raindrop in the the combined $300 million-plus river of spending by the energy and utility industries last year.

This may go a long way to explaining the recent rise in climate change skepticism. It comes down to the the old journalism adage: "follow the money."

Image: US Capitol coal-fired power plant.  After years of pressure by the coal industry to keep it burning coal, despite known air pollution problems in the area, it was due to be switched entirely to natural gas by the end of 2009.

Make Your Voice Heard for Climate Action: Call Your Senators This Week

The news out of Washington has grown discouraging lately. Lawmakers are bickering and Congress is in gridlock. Corporations, meanwhile, have been given license by the Supreme Court to purchase more political influence than ever before.
 
Many Americans are tempted to turn their backs on the DC infighting, but that would be a mistake. We still possess a powerful ability to influence our lawmakers. When we raise our voices loudly and fully enough, we can hit the core sensitivity of politicians: the desire for votes. They are still our representatives, after all, and they have to respond to public outcry.  
 
From Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to Wyoming's oil and gas fields, I've seen concerned activists demand the best of our lawmakers.
 
That citizen force is about to be unleashed again, and this time, it will be in support of the most critical environmental vote of my lifetime: passing clean energy and climate legislation in the Senate.
 
This Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, you have a chance to add your voice to the hundreds of thousands of people who will be urging their senators to pass the bill as part of a 72-hour call-in campaign - a national grassroots' effort by more than 30 groups.
 
The campaign is organized by environmental organizations, labor unions, veterans groups, faith and business leaders who want to build momentum for climate action, and now is a critical moment, since right now Congress is setting its agenda for the rest of 2010. We need clean energy and climate legislation to be on the table.

 
Taken together, these hundreds of thousands of calls can give senators the shot in the arm they need. A reminder that Americans from all backgrounds want our leaders to deal with the crisis of climate change and unleash the opportunities that come from building a clean energy future.
 
Some lawmakers grumble that passing clean energy and climate legislation will be too hard during an election year. Too hard?
 
I think it will be too hard for our children to have to clean up the devastation of climate change because we failed to act soon enough. It will be too hard for American workers to remain unemployed because we haven't given businesses the incentives they need to invest in innovative technologies and create jobs. And it will be too hard for America to watch China dominate the global clean energy market because we decided to sit on the sidelines while the clean energy race passed us by.
 
American voters expect their leaders to rise up to challenges, not shy away from them. Clean energy and climate legislation calls on our lawmakers to be bold and visionary. But if they are going to lead us into the 21st century, they need to know that American voters are behind them.
 
And remember, they need to hear from ordinary citizens who support this bill, because they are getting an earful from industry lobbyists who oppose it.
 
According to recent reports, oil and gas companies spent about $154 million on lobbying in 2009--16 percent more than they spent in 2008. Exxon Mobil led the pack with as much as $6.7 million spent on lobbying efforts. Compare these deep pockets to the lobbying budget of the entire environmental community: $18.3 million.
 
The deck is stacked, but that doesn't mean dirty tricks will win in the end.
 
Years ago, Big Oil companies spent a lot of money claiming that removing lead from gasoline would ruin them. Big Coal complained that controlling acid rain pollution would put them out of business. They lost those battles, and they will lose this one too.
 
But only if we fight back.
 
Now is the time to make your voices heard. If you believe that investing in clean energy can create jobs, protect our security, put America at the forefront of a global market, and help us solve global warming, then tell you should call-in and tell your senators to pass a clean energy and climate bill.
 
Call in to 1-877-973-7693. Tell them who you are. And say you support passing clean energy and climate legislation now.
 

 

Something to consider - many of us are still knee-deep in snow, but winter's not going to last forever, and with the prospect of rain in our future, it's never too early to start thinking ahead.

If you have any sort of garden, and you live where there's any sort of rain, it would be widely to your advantage to consider getting a rain barrel.

Rain barrels are big units that collect water run-off from the roof of your house. There are myriad obvious advantages. Many towns impose rules or bans on watering your plants, but if using natural rain water evades those regulations. Using rain water is, of course, free except for the price of the barrel and the labor involved in using it - both of which soon become negligible when the price of lawn and gardening, in summertime especially, is considered. Forty percent of the household water usually goes to the lawn in the summer - and in this economy, that adds up.

And, of course, using natural rain water is very green. It saves water and recycles it rather than allowing it to go to waste in streams or storm drains.  It prevents pollution by reducing runoff, and so prevents erosion and increases water quality. It can also be better for your plants: it is "soft" water, meaning it is free from chemicals you will often find in tap water (chlorine, lime calcium, etc) that are not best for the plants.

There are some conflicted disadvantages to this water. For instance, since the water comes from your roof, it may take unwanted materials from the roof with it. It certainly isn't a good idea to drink it, but it is reasonable enough to use these barrels to water your garden or wash your car. Some might say that watering anything you intend to eat with this is risky, but that's an exaggeration: just wash your tomatoes, as you should anyway, before digging in. Potential crisis diverted.

Three hundred gallons of water will run off for every half inch of rain on a 500 square foot roof. That's a lot of water you can be saving. Rain barrels are easy to obtain and they are not unreasonably expensive, and you can even find decorative pieces. On top of that, they are cheap and easy to build for yourself. The internet is flooded with information and how-tos.

When setting up a barrel, keep in mind that it will get heavy when full - over four hundred pounds! - so put it on something firm. Take overflowing into account and keep the water away from your foundation.

Again, it may seem early to start thinking about this, but with the state of our economy and our environment, any tricks at any time can help. Just thinking about it now, and by the time summer rolls around you can guarantee your garden will be naturally watered, healthy, and whole.

Caught in the Devil's Bargain: Chevron stabs workers in the back

 

Have you seen the latest story coming out about Chevron and their troubles in Richmond, CA around their attempt to ram though a giant expansion of their oil refinery?  Seems since they didn't get their way, the Oil Giant wants to close up shop, dismantle the 300 acre facility and sell the parts at the world's largest garage sale over in China.  Huh?  Get rid of your largest refinery in the most profitable market in the Pacific?  What's really going on?

A strange thing happened when Chevron made their latest move to expand their huge  refinery operations in Richmond California, a town mostly known for crime, drugs, failing schools and pollution.  Chevron's 2 billion dollar expansion won approval from the City and the local Air agency despite some serious legal issues that were immediately appealed in Court.  Knowing full well that these issues would likely end in the approval documents being declared illegal and work on the project halted until they were fixed, Chevron played an unbelievably cruel trick on the families of more than a thousand construction workers.  They hired them and began work on the doomed project knowing that if the court rejected the questionable environmental estimates, the workers would have to be laid off, possibly for more than a year.

Why would an local employer and alleged good corporate citizen do such a thing?  Simple.  They wanted to silence their critics and in fact bury them for good.  In recent years the local City Council, the Mayor and local watchdog groups have grown weary of Chevron's threats and bullying tactics to skirt taxes, regulations and just plain being a good neighbor. 

Chevron executives knew all too well, the legal challenge to their sketchy environmental reports about the expansion could succeed, resulting in an injunction to stop work and throw the fate of the 1,000 workers and their families into ditch.  This would effectively not only nullify any victory that Chevron critics could claim from the ruling, but in fact make the community health advocates into seemingly heartless villains caring nothing about the workers.  And as Chevron's appeal of the ruling proceeds, it gives them the opportunity to use the workers as pawns in their longer term scheme to silence their critics once and for all.

And so far it's working.  Chevron has fostered dozens of stories in the mainstream media about:

• The hopes of working families being dashed by treehuggers and radicals.
• Non profits like local solar companies losing their Chevron community benefit dollars tied to the project
• Union leaders crying like Chicken Little that the sky is falling
• Chevron closing the refinery and selling the parts to China (my personal favorite!)
• Richmond withering away and dieing after having killed its goose and golden egg

The real story doesn't seem to have gotten out yet about the cold calculating scheme Chevron hatched.  This is due in part to their million dollar PR machine and the heart wrenching stories of laid off workers.   But you have to give them credit, as Chevron's ad campaign touts the power of their "Human Energy".

Or is it just another example how the Oil Giant uses its brute force to crush people who demand accountability, like the indigenous folks in Equador and the dozens of other regions they have exploited and left behind polluted and poor?

Late this afternoon, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's office issued a brief statement saying that House Bill 2701 -- widely condemned by opponents who called it "the death knell of the solar industry" in Arizona -- had been withdrawn by its primary sponsor, Representative Debbie Lesko (R-9).

The full statement reads:

"Representative Lesko's wise and thoughtful actions today to withdraw HB 2701 should be lauded. This sends a clear and united message to employers around the world - Arizona remains the premier destination for solar industries."

Rep. Lesko's office is referring calls to the House Republican media office, which, in turn, is referring calls to the Governor's message.

OnEarth's previous post on bill 2701 can be seen, here.

 

 

 

I'm at the annual, one-day Greener Gadgets Conference here in New York City, where the capstone event is just kicking off: the Greener Gadgets design competition. Many of the entries in the design contest are prototypes or conceptual.

The foundation of this conference is the concept that the gizmos we love can be more ecologically sound -- made of benign matierals, highly energy efficient -- and also, that it's OK to love gadgets and want to have them in our lives, even if we're trying to be more enviro-conscious.

The judges are a trio of green design luminaries: Sarah Rich, a senior editor at Dwell magazine (who, full disclosure, I have worked with in the past); Julian Lwin, owner of design firm Lwindesign; and Andrew Wagner, editor-in-chief of DIY-meets-shelter bible ReadyMade magazine.

It's a tough panel to impress -- they have already slayed two finalists in the competition and barely agreed to advance the third, "Empower," a rocking chair for public spaces that can harness the energy of the motion to power your laptop or other energy-hogging device.

They're just getting into the merits of the "Corky," a wireless mouse made of cork and powered by the piezo-energy created by moving a computer mouse around.  

Rich likes it, on the basis that computer mouses already exist by the millions, and this would be an improvement. Lwin is swayed to its side once he learns it's going to be manufactured from recycled wine corks, but he wonders if you could really generate enough energy to power it just from moving it around.

Wagner also likes the Corky: "It's a subtle twist on something that already exisits, which I like."  Corky makes it into the ultimate round.

Onward: Rich really likes the "Illumi-charger," a "grid-free USB wall power outlet" that's meant to make wall warts obsolete. Lwin and Wagner agree. They like that it's designed to be made from (presumably enviro-benign) bio-plastics, powered by ambient light (like solar calculators), and that it looks good without being obtrusive as well as serving a real need. Illumi-charges makes it into the final round.

The "AUG/Augmented Living Goods Program" meets universal approval, as well -- a phone app that helps shoppers identify locally-grown foods. It even has a community feature: app users can enter comments to help guide other shoppers.

Now the audience gets involved: The final prizes of $1,000 for third place, $2,000 for second, and $3,000 for first will be awarded based on the applause that each of the four finalists receives. 

Poor Corky barely gets a hit on the sound meter. Illumi-charger seems to hit a 3.

The final contender, AUG, tips the meter a smidge past '3' and even gets some woo-hoos from the audience. And yep: AUG/Living Goods Program takes first. One of AUG's strongest points with the panel and the audience, it seems, is that it's "demateriallized" -- as an app, it takes advantage of existing infrastructure (smart phones and iPod Touches) instead of bringing more stuff into the world.

Second place goes to Empower, and third place goes to the Illumi-charger.

Much like a lynx or a grizzly bear cub, a healthy whitebark pine tree can be pretty hard to spot in the Northern Rockies. Over the past 40 years, more than half of the whitebark pines in the region have been wiped out. In some remaining pockets, 80 to 100 percent of the trees are dead or dying, plagued by climate-driven beetle outbreaks and a fungus called blister rust.

NRDC filed a petition more than a year ago asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the whitebark pine as an endangered species. The service has yet to respond to the petition, prompting a lawsuit filed today.

The irony of the embattled whitebark pine is that these trees are nature's survivors. They are the first to colonize altitudes where many other trees dare not set roots, growing gnarled and massive despite heavy winds and deep chills, providing shelter and nourishment to other mountain species. Some whitebark pines can grow to be 1,000 years old -- but decades of drought, fire suppression, and recent beetle infestations (made more intense by global warming) are proving to be more than the trees can bear.

Scientist Jesse Logan told told OnEarth last fall: "We're on pace to lose 80 percent of our whitebark pine forests within the next five to ten years. There are a few exceptions ... but the whitebark pine is going to be functionally lost in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem."

How bad is the loss of a tree? It depends on your perspective. For some people -- even scientists -- the death of an ancient tree can feel like a spiritual loss. For Yellowstone's endangered grizzlies, which rely heavily on whitebark pine seeds to fatten up for the winter, the loss of the tree could affect the bear's survival. And if you like to drink water, the loss of the whitebark pine affects you, too. Healthy whitebark pines trap mountain snow like a fence, prolonging the release of water in the spring and helping maintain Western water supplies.

"While the clock ticks, our mountaintops are turning from green, live trees to red, infested trees, to gray, dead forests," says NRDC wildlife biologist Sylvia Fallon. "And the ripple that this loss will create throughout the ecosystem will be soon to follow. We need to do everything we can to get whitebark pine the attention and resources that it needs."

Photo: Dying whitebark pine trees turn rust red and then gray.

We're saps for the "noble savage."

The movie "Avatar" is just the newest in a long list of pop culture artifacts in which a 97-pound weakling from industrial society becomes a new, better man by joining a tribe that lives in an holistic union with nature.

But once we take off the rose-colored (or 3-D) glasses, it's back to business as usual: watching our noble savages ride off into the sunset, not caring a whole lot about how they view the world.

Empirical and traditional methods for observing nature can complement each other, however. Take this case from the James Bay region of northern Quebec, as reported recently on Science Daily:

In the mid-1980s, the same highway used to facilitate construction of the controversial James Bay hydroelectric project was opened up to allow sport hunters into the once-inaccessible region to pursue game, including abundant moose.

The area's native Cree had long relied upon moose for food and other materials, as part of their traditional, subsistence way of life. Based on traditional monitoring methods, which combine moose sightings with tracking and encountering moose scat, they believed by the late 1980s that James Bay's population of the massive ungulates was crashing.

The region's professional wildlife managers didn't take their worries seriously. But it turned out that the Cree were right.

The road that had been opened to sport hunters also brought in logging operations, which literally cut away cover that moose used to hide from prying eyes.  

So even as overall moose numbers dropped, the remaining animals were easier to spot -- both by wildlife managers doing aerial surveys, and hunters looking for quarry. The hunters were able to kill the same number of moose, while wildlife managers extrapolated from survey and hunting data that the population was stable.

By the early 1990s, however, it apparently became impossible to ignore the fact that moose were getting very thin on the ground. (The moose population had been cut in half in less than a decade by overhunting.) The professionals began to listen a lot more seriously to the observations made by the indigenous Cree via their traditional methods.  "Today the Canadian wildlife authorities have learned their lesson," Science Daily chirps, "and work closely with the Cree, listening to what they have to say, and respecting their intimate knowledge of the environment."

Patricia Cochran, the director of the Alaska Native Science Commission, is working to make these sorts of collaborations more common.

An Inupiaq and a health professional herself, Cochran (who I met at the Copenhagen climate talks last December) told me that collaboration between scientists and Alaska Natives is a challenging process on all sides.  

For scientists trained in empirical research methods, it means "not just looking at a specific question, but at the interaction [of a species] with everything around it," she said. "Other creatures, food sources, weather conditions. We tend to look at things holistically."

In turn, some Native Alaskans have struggled with mistrust of Western methods of gathering information -- which in comparison to indigenous knowledge, excel at revealing the invisible. Cochran said that in a collaboration involving a study of harbor seals in the Prince William Sound, "it really took a while for our community to agree with scientists that we would tag an animal," Cochran told me. "People had to be convinced that tagging wouldn't harm them."

In this age of climate disruption, we must become more resilient to change. It would probably make a lot of sense to learn the lesson of Quebec's disappearing moose, and embrace different but equally valid ways of observing and understanding what's going on around us.  We just have to stay clear-eyed about indigenous knowledge, as well as careful with how we apply the scientific method.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

The border between the United States and Mexico is fortified with walls and fences and patrolled by aircraft, remote-sensing technology, and an increasing number of border patrol agents.

But just putting up barriers doesn't break the deep-rooted economic and cultural ties between the two countries. And it doesn't stop the environmental and public health concerns that straddle the border and demand solutions from both nations.

At the recent American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Diego, scientists described how the Los Laureles Canyon, which stretches from Tijuana to the San Diego wetlands, is ravaged by pollution. This causes public health problems for impoverished Tijuana residents and environmental problems that affect migratory birds and people on both sides of the border.

Hiram Sarabia of the UCSD NIEHS Superfund Research Program describes the canyon as an “urban observatory” that mirrors thousands like it along the 2,000-mile length of the border. Debris, wastewater, and contaminated dust and soil from a large swath of Tijuana funnel into the canyon streams, which ultimately empty into the Tijuana estuary and then the Pacific Ocean on the U.S. side of the border.

The debris-filled, dusty hillsides of the canyon, home to 65,000 Mexicans, are within several miles of the opulent hotels and popular beaches of downtown San Diego, though most Americans have never been there.

As Kim Larsen documented in a Fall 2009 cover story for OnEarth, impoverished Mexican residents typically have little access to quality health care, and public health issues that arise in Mexico also impact U.S. residents. The United States spends about a million dollars a year dredging the estuary, and the pathogens and toxicants streaming through the canyon into the estuary and local beaches have other financial and health costs.

Tijuana’s population increased quickly and exponentially in recent decades, largely to fuel the maquiladora sector, which are factories owned by U.S. and foreign companies that line the Mexican side of the border. Shantytowns sprung up with little infrastructure or planning, meaning roads are unpaved and there are no sewage systems. Soapy water and raw sewage run in streams of “agua negra” running through the canyon, where kids play and stray animals drink.

Pathogens from raw sewage, dead animals, and other sources accumulate in the water and in the dust that permeates Tijuana and washes into the estuary. Canyon residents are at high risk for Valley Fever, a bacterial disease disease caused by fungal spores and spread through dust. Residents in the “colonias” (or villages) hugging the canyon hillsides report high incidences of skin and respiratory disease and eye irritation.

Meanwhile, toxicants including PCBs, PAHs, heavy metals, and dioxins are rampant. Water and air emissions and solid waste from maquiladoras make their way into soil and streams. Illegal dumping of hazardous chemical and industrial waste is widespread. And heavy metals and chemicals slough off from the tires, trashed appliances, and other discards used to build retaining walls and shacks throughout the canyon.

These old tires and washing machines symbolize the interlocked fortunes of the United States and Mexico in this region: they are likely to be manufactured by American companies in Mexican maquiladoras, then sold to U.S. consumers, then returned to Mexico on the second-hand market, then reused to bolster crumbling shantytown cliffs. Ultimately, toxics from these products flow through the canyon back into the United States.

Scientists and advocates say environmental and planning policy at the border is a messy realm, with a serious dearth of agencies, policies, or legal frameworks to facilitate infrastructure and environmental improvements. The North American Free Trade Agreement, which took effect in 1994, was supposed to create mechanisms for environmental protection and bi-national cooperation, but that has not been the case in any meaningful way.

San Diego State University professor and author Lawrence Herzog said the maquiladora industry bears much responsibility for addressing the environmental and health problems in Los Laureles canyon and beyond.

“The U.S. and multinational corporations who use the border to profit have not stepped up to the plate to pay for the advantages they are gaining from the region,” Herzog said. “Why aren’t the multinational companies that are making billions from cheap labor paying for infrastructure and the problems they’re creating?”

Some solutions are relatively simple and inexpensive. Scientists and advocates are involving U.S. volunteers and Tijuana residents to pave roads with hexagonal concrete tiles, which cuts down on dust and erosion. Oscar Romo, with NOAA’s coastal training program, has worked with locals to build strategically engineered retaining walls out of tires.

Romo said this doesn’t create contamination like the haphazard tire retaining walls, and it diverts tires from ending up in the estuary. He said his project reused 10,000 tires in a month, while the government of Baja state has only removed 2,000 tires in a year.

Scientists are also mapping and analyzing contamination and sedimentation patterns to better understand the challenges and possible solutions. Keith Pezzoli of the UCSD NIEHS Superfund Research Program said that while U.S. agencies spend about a million dollars a year dredging the Tijuana estuary, “with a fraction of that amount of money you could do a proactive intervention in the (Tijuana) hillsides to stabilize the land.”

Sarabia said that scientists gathering information and working with community groups in Tijuana can help build the political will and grassroots process needed to address the canyon’s problems on a number of levels.

“Our role builds capacity of the community to identify, prioritize and address contamination and public health problems,” said Sarabia. “You can’t make decisions in a vacuum. We need to work closely with the community, to provide incentives for them to work with us, and our projects have the potential to create jobs in the community.”

Photo: Tijuana's shantytowns are peppered with sources of industrial and chemical waste./Kari Lydersen

In the face of flight and train cancellations and warnings of a total shut down of the eastern seaboard, I recently joined eight other clean tech leaders to fight my way into Washington. We arrived at a moment when federal carbon and clean energy policy is hanging in the balance and brought the message that a cap and price on carbon is a critical part of our economic stimulus package. 

The bad weather brought us a silver lining: the storm provided a pause in Capitol Hill schedules that left us virtually the only non-government people on Capitol Hill.  As a result we were able to conduct extended meetings throughout the blizzard with key players on carbon policy.  Even Senators with whom we did not have prior appointments agreed to meet with us, if for no other reason than that they couldn't believe we were there!

Our delegation from Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2) included a spectrum of businesses, both in and outside of the clean technology industry: large and distributed scale renewable energy project builders, energy storage technology companies, biofuels companies, energy efficiency retrofitting contractors, cleantech investors, and executives of other companies in key states that are impacted by the emerging clean energy economy. Together, our delegation is engaged in business activities in 37 states and multiple countries. 

In other words, we brought support for carbon policy from a broad base of American businesses poised for growth. And we reaffirmed that a cap and price on carbon are essential to create American jobs, grow our economy and spur the innovations and products that will keep the U.S. competitive in the global economy.

Our message to everyone that we met in the Capitol was straightforward:  Whatever the mechanism, the growth and vigor of the American economy depend on our making a national commitment to a clean low-carbon energy future.

While key Senators have continued to focus on a climate and clean energy bill, Senate leadership has made it clear that the priorities are a jobs bill and a healthcare bill.  We made a strong argument that carbon policy would be a highly effective component of a jobs bill and engaged Senators and key staff in topics ranging from protecting American manufacturing jobs, to whether China would engage adequately on carbon emission reductions, to interest in bringing new low carbon jobs to states with high unemployment.

Time is of the essence if we're going to get a carbon bill passed this year.  E2 plans plan to keep up the pressure on Congress not to turn its back on carbon policy because of the current contentious political atmosphere, or because of an inability to agree on the economic mechanism for achieving emission reductions.

Our strongest argument -- and one that we are uniquely qualified to deliver -- is that the best way forward to an economic recovery, job creation and an improved balance of trade is a national commitment to a low carbon clean energy future.  Our greatest leverage for a comprehensive climate and clean energy bill is the fact that low carbon jobs are beginning to appear in states all across the country, creating a "bubble up" demand for action from Congress.

We're already planning our next trip to Washington and looking for businesses that are based in (or who have expansion plans or supply chain relationships) in the following states: Massachusetts, Virginia, Maine, Montana, Tennessee, Louisiana and Michigan.  

Without a comprehensive policy to promote clean technologies, we put America's innovators and entrepreneurs at a disadvantage. A carbon cap program will send a clear price signal, spurring major investment in energy efficient and low-carbon technologies, fostering innovation and upgrades, creating jobs and lowering our dependence on foreign energy sources.

Our competitors in the global economy, including China, India, Spain, and Germany have committed unequivocally to increasing their leadership in clean energy. We are rapidly losing market share domestically and internationally in renewable energy technologies that were first developed in the U.S. with American research dollars.

 For example, China is already the world's leading manufacturer of solar panels and wind turbines, with plans by their government to spend half a trillion dollars over the next ten years on renewable energy.

Five years ago, E2 campaigned to "level the playing field" among domestic energy sources within the U.S. It has swiftly become clear that we must now enact policies to level the playing field for American energy products in the global economy.

To do this the U.S. must place a price on carbon as a critical market signal to our nation's entrepreneurs. This must be done through comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation. Otherwise, we will soon find ourselves as dependent on foreign clean energy products as we are now on foreign oil.

Environmental Entrepreneurs homepage

 

credit:  Ian McAllister/pacificwild.org

Bears are now being celebrated at the 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver. There are pictures of grizzlies and black bears on posters and murals all over town, even a huge white Spirit bear was featured in the opening ceremony.  Bears are imbedded in Canadian culture and society; they symbolize our natural world that we are so blessed with, yet come this spring British Columbia is set to make another dubious milestone in its checkered history of bear management.

In April of 2010, the BC government plans on opening the sport hunt of bears in the Great Bear Rainforest. The genetically distinct Haida black bear will be targeted as well as the monarch of the rainforest - the grizzly.  Even the coastal black bear that carries the recessive gene that produces the pure white bear or Spirit bear can legally be killed.  The iconic bear is featured as the NRDC logo.

Bears will just be waking up from their long winter hibernation, and moving to lower elevation sedge meadows in search of the protein rich plants. Tragically, "sport" hunters will be waiting, hiding in blinds with high-powered rifles waiting to take home a lifeless trophy.

In 2007, 430 grizzlies were killed in B.C., 363 of them by sport hunters, making the year the highest rate of hunter-caused mortality of this iconic bear since records have been kept. This sad statistic puts the lie to the provincial government’s own description of grizzlies as perhaps the greatest symbol of the wilderness whose survival will be the greatest testimony to our environmental commitment.

British Columbia supports one of the greatest diversity of bears in the world. However, our government continues to treat bears as an expendable resource. The science behind the population estimates on which annual harvest rates are based is flawed and arguments in support of bear hunting are based on false assumptions about the economic importance of the hunt. And clearly, a growing number of people believe it is time to end the trophy hunt before these animals are pushed to the brink of extinction or extirpated as they have been elsewhere in the continent.

Why do we allow the bear hunt to continue?  This is a question I have been asking the government of BC for a long time and have yet to be provided with an answer that addresses three basic issues: Economics, Conservation and Culture. 

Starting with culture: For me, hunting for subsistence makes sense.  I would find it difficult to live where I do if I did not hunt and fish to provide for my family, but the trophy hunt is about something entirely different, it is about gratuitous greed and pleasure.  It is simply to put a trophy on the wall.

Today, it should be culturally unacceptable and a practice we look back on with shame.  First Nations on this coast find killing animals for pleasure or sport culturally abhorrent, as we all should.

Conservation:  We don't know enough about the status of bears in the rainforest to justify a sport kill and given the uncertainty facing bears especially with declining salmon runs and climate change we should be doing everything possible to protect them.

Economics are simple:  A live bear is worth far more than a dead one.  For example one bear viewing lodge in Glendale Inlet at Knight Inlet on the south end of the Great Bear Rainforest generates more revenue for the Province of B.C. than the entire trophy hunt of bears combined.

Bears are sentient, intelligent animals and they deserve a quality of life. I don't presume to know exactly what that means to a bear, but it surely does not mean being killed indiscriminately just for someone to mount on a wall.  I do not believe that we can evolve as a caring society when we allow animals to be killed for perverse pleasure, greed or ignorance.  Trophy hunting is an anachronism and when it is banned it simply won't be missed.

British Columbia should be positioning itself as a forward thinking society, one that is caring and respectful of animals that we share this beautiful Province with.  In the end, if we cannot protect our most iconic land mammals from deliberate sport killing what does that tell us about ourselves?

See Pacific Wild's trophy hunt ad at Liz Barratt-Brown's Switchboard blog.

credit:  Ian McAllister/pacificwild.org

Seven months ago, Arizona won an important battle in the fight to position itself as the "solar capital" of the nation.

The legislature passed, and the governor signed into law, a major tax credit for manufacturers of renewable energy equipement. Together with a Renewable Energy Standard (RES) requiring utilities to generate 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by the year 2025, Arizona attraced the first Chinese solar manufacturing company -- Suntech, that nation's largest -- to build a plant in North America.

In a November press release explaining its decision, Suntech credited Arizona's renewable energy policies, "particularly its Renewable Energy Standard."

In a surprising move, however, the state legislature is now considering a bill that, as opponents point out, could end the RES program. House Bill 2701 would redfine "renewable" to include nuclear power.

The state's largest utility currently gets 27 percent of its electricty from the Palo Verde nuclear plant just outside of Phoenix. Under HB 2701, the utility would already be in compliance with the RES mandate, meaning no further renewable power plants -- solar, wind, whatever -- would need to be built.

Republican Kris Mayes chairs the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC), which crafted the current RES. Mayes says HB 2701 "would surely be the death knell for advancing solar energy in the state."

Solar: An Innocent Bystander

Mayes could well be right, although the solar industry isn't the intended target in this political drive-by shooting. The legislature has the ACC in its cross-hairs.

"Representative [Debbie] Lesko doesn't want to discourage jobs or harm the solar industry in any way," says a spokesperson for Lesko, who introduced HB 2701. The spokesperson, who agreed to talk on condition of anonymity, explained that the bill will create two RES standards, a conflict that will inevitably be decided in court.

"This bill will create a legislative RES, which we believe is appropriate," said the spokesperson.

Behind the turf fight is a conservative ideology that is opposed to the government mandates that result in increased costs to utilities -- which can be passed on to rate-payers. According to her spokesperson, Rep. Lesko and other bill supporters believe that utilities will invest in renewable power because of market forces.

But a 2007 study from the Berkeley National Laboratory casts doubt on that belief.

The report compared actual solar installations made between 2000 and 2006 in states with and without an RES supporting solar (California was excluded from the study because of its other progressive solar policies).

As seen in the chart below, states with an RES had more than double the solar installations of states lacking such a mandate.

If, without an RES, solar installations do drop, sponsors of HB 2701 say they will use other means to incentivize renewable energy.

Asked what incentives are being discussed, Lesko's spokesperson says, "To be honest, there isn't a game plan on how to get there."

Critics of the Critics

Tor Valenza, aka, "Solar Fred," writes a popular blog about solar power for Renewable Energy World. He ranks states on a five-star system according to solar-friendly public policies.

Asked for his thoughts on HB 2701, Valenza replied:

If utilities stopped giving rebates because they could meet their renewable portfolio obligations with nuclear, that would kill a lot of solar companies. ...[and] it would discourage citizens from going solar.

The bill, he said, would reduce the state's ranking from four down to two stars. (He added that the only reason it wouldn't drop further was because of the annual amount of sunshine in Arizona provides a high solar potential.)

Fast-Track to Oblivion

The bill will likely sail through both committees to which it's been assigned in the Arizona House. Sponsors of HB 2701 chair both committees and comprise a majority of committee members. The same scenario awaits on the floor of both House and Senate. The bill has 52 sponsors and co-sponsors, including the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate.

Ideological Creep

In 2001, Arizona was one of the first states to implement an RES. Today, some 32 states and Washington, D.C., have adopted the measure in some form. If HB 2701 passes, Arizona will claim another first: the only state to count electricity from an existing nuclear power plant toward an RES goal -- driving a stake through the heart of what has been a successful program.

The danger here goes beyond Arizona's fortunes in the race to become the solar capital of the nation. The state's pull-back could inspire other states -- where anger at "big government" simmers, and occasionally boils over -- to follow Arizona's example and simply abandon the field.

If that happens, the next solar capitol won't be in Arizona, California, or New Mexico. It'll be in Zhejiang, Guangdong, or Jiangsu.

Summer sea ice is melting in the Arctic, exposing for the first time the fabled Northwest Passage that Europeans sought for centuries. That creates a new frontier for human endeavors ... and potentially a new world of trouble, scientists said this weekend at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in San Diego.

An Arctic largely free of ice during the summer will mean new opportunities for fishing, oil and gas production, and shipping, in an area that is both extremely sensitive ecologically and highly unregulated.

Shipping seasons will be as much as four months longer, depending on the type of vessel, said Lisa Speer, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's international cceans program. That could help open huge oil and gas reserves. The Arctic holds almost one-fifth of the world's known reserves, and 80 percent of the petroleum is offshore.

Five nations -- the United States, Russia, Norway, Denmark (through Greenland), and Canada -- have jurisdiction over Arctic waters within 200 nautical miles of their coastlines. Speer noted that this creates a haphazard "patchwork" of regulation and is worrisome if countries (namely Russia) have lax environmental standards.

An oil spill in the Arctic could be devastating (think the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska two decades ago),  because people really don't know how to clean up oil in a frozen environment. Even if large stretches of sea become ice-free, a spill would likely coat adjacent sea ice and icy coastlines. And aside from spills, daily discharges from shipping, oil and gas pumping, or other operations could take a heavy environmental toll.

The rapid retreat of summer sea ice will also open up vast tracts of Arctic "high seas" -- international waters that Speer said are not subject to any Arctic-specific treaties that regulate fishing, oil and gas, or shipping, including wastewater discharge from ships.

"There's no international mechanism that presently allows us to integrate those things for ecosystem management," she said. "In systems straddling (for example) the U.S. and Canada or the high seas, we have no way to be sure activities are considered together and protective measures taken."

The five Arctic coastal nations will meet in Quebec on March 29 to discuss "responsible development" of Arctic offshore resources. In 2008, the countries agreed to avoid territorial conflicts and protect the environment in future development. But what that means in practice remains to be determined.

Although the exact manifestations of climate change are often highly unpredictable, observations and modeling indicate that Arctic sea ice has already shrunk significantly and is highly likely to continue that trend in coming decades. Winter sea ice will see relatively little change, said John Walsh, a professor at the International Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks, Alaska. But ice loss over the summer -- with the lowest point typically reached in September -- has already outpaced predictions and is likely to accelerate.

Walsh noted that 2005 through 2008 were the Arctic's warmest years on record, and four of the five warmest Arctic decades have been in the last half century. In 2007, summer ice hit a record low, opening the Northwest Passage. Ice has recovered somewhat during the past two summers, but the overall trend remains intact.

Melting ice creates what scientists call "feedback loops" that accelerate water warming and ice melting. For example, shrinking ice cover last summer opened what Walsh called a "gaping hole" in the Chukchi and Bering Seas, which probably allowed more warm water from the Pacific Ocean to enter the Arctic, meaning more ice erosion. The ice typically refreezes during the winter, which means more ice might actually be produced each year than in the past, but it will be thinner and of a different quality than ice that has survived the summer.

Along with the widely publicized threat to polar bears and the walrus, the ice melt will continue to have significant and often complicated effects on Arctic biology, from the benthic layer of organisms on the sea floor to the plankton and other life forms up the food chain, to the terrestrial creatures (including humans) who feed on them.

Environmental groups and scientists are pushing for a conservation plan for an increasingly ice-free Arctic, but things are in the very early stages scientifically and even moreso politically. An Arctic scientist at the symposium said that 10 times more scientists are working together on Antarctic issues than the Arctic, and getting scientists from different countries to share data has been a struggle.

"We've pressed for discussion at a very high level to develop standards for shipping, fishing, and oil and gas," said Speer. "Additionally, we need a new framework to implement the strategies scientists have told us we need to do. This has to happen as a matter of urgency. We just don't have the time to wait."

Image: Goddard Space Flight Center

The molasses-paced progress of environmental policy can be enough to crush the optimism of all but the most stoic observers.

The world of design, by comparison, is a source of immediate gratification.

Flip through the pages of Transmaterial 3: A Catalog of Materials That Redefine Our Physical Environment and you'll encounter one encouraging, fascinating example after another of human inventiveness:

• Carolyn Dry's "self-repairing concrete" features an especially durable cement that is "less pourous, and also prevents corrosion and cracking." With the pollution created by concrete manufacture accounting for 8-10 percent of the world's human-propelled CO2 emissions, self-repairing concrete is positioned as a way to reduce the demand and thus the greenhouse gas load of this common building material.
• "Laser-cut cork" made from the by-product of producing wine bottle stoppers has natural sound- and thermal-insulating properties. It's positioned as an interior design material that can be used for room dividers, walls, or tapestries.
• "Mycoply" board, designed by Edward Browka, apparently involves fungi that have been tailored to grow in flat, bendable planks. It can replace petrochemical foams as a core material in all sorts of everyday products, from boat hulls to auto panels to wind turbine blades. Most intriguingly, and presumably unlike other industrial foams, "mycoply also uses a low-embodied-energy manufacturing process, as the material self-assembles at room temperature and pressure in the dark."

Some of the more than 200 up-and-coming materials detailed in Transmaterial 3 are so cutting edge they defy quick explanation. (There doesn't seem to be anything that page 99's "environmentally tuned wall system" covered with an "intelligent quilt" can't do.) Others are relatively recent darlings of the green-design world (featured on blogs like Inhabitat and re-nest, and CoolHunting), which this guide may elevate into the mainstream. A few of my favorites among them:

• Solar Ivy, a mesh of of flexible, leaf-like photovoltaic panels that can be hung on a building exterior.
• The Bicicleta rug designed by Nani Marquina and Ariadne Miquel, made from used bicycle tire inner tubes.
• The Rainwater H2OG system of hollow building blocks that can store rainwater and graywater.
• Michelle Brand's Flowerfall, a translucent curtain made by cutting the bottoms off used PET drink bottles and linking them together.

Transmaterial 3 is geared to architects and designers. But just about anyone interested at any level in design, engineering, or sustainability -- or who simply loves to know about cool new stuff -- should enjoy browsing this collection of new and emerging materials. Many of them do equal service to aesthetics and the environment.

To get a taste of the content before putting down two twenties on this book, check out transmaterial.net, the online companion to the Transmaterial guides.

Transmaterial 3: 
A Catalog of Materials That Redefine Our Physical Environment
Edited by Blaine Brownell
Princeton Architectural Press, $40.00