The letter is titled “Securing America’s Energy Future” but it calls for a continuation of America’s failed energy policies of the past. It reads like the tired old pursue-every-energy-option energy non-policy policy we used to get out of the first Bush administration. There is something here for everyone, but fundamentally this is about more drilling, more digging, and more fissioning, dressed up with lip service for efficiency and renewables. Not very different from the current gang except that Bush II usually doesn’t even bother with the lip service.

Particularly telling is what they have to say about global warming. Rather than recognizing that responding to climate disruption requires an urgent all out effort to fundamentally change the way we produce and consume energy, as Al Gore did yesterday, this group calls simply for more research:

Invest in Climate Science to Guide Energy, Economic, and Environmental Policy

A deeper understanding of the issues and developing science associated with the environment and climate change will influence national and global energy, economic, and environmental policy choices.  Balancing these priorities requires greater consideration of the complex processes driving climate change and increased attention to adaptation measures.  We must increase our investment in climate science, which will enable us to adjust policies as scientific understanding advances. …

Blah, blah, blah…

This could have come straight from the talking points of either Bush administration. Not too surprising given that the signers include James Schlesinger, James Watkins, and Spencer Abraham, all former Secretaries of Energy. It's just disappointing that folks like Jim Woolsey, Colin Powell, and Mack McClarty signed on to this drivel. They know better, but I guess it’s hard to resist an appeal from the old boys club.

Legislation to cap and reduce global warming pollution didn’t get across the goal line after obstructionist tactics blocked serious consideration of the Climate Security Act, as Frances Beinecke described yesterday. Nonetheless, the process of bringing the Climate Security Act to the U.S. Senate floor advanced the prospects for enacting the federal legislation we need to avoid the worst consequences of global warming.

This isn’t obvious from the press coverage or from tuning in on C-SPAN. Most of the week that the Climate Security Act was supposed to be considered by the Senate was chewed up by procedural shenanigans, such as opponents requiring the entire bill to be read into the record (which took nine hours), and by bickering over who is responsible for $4 per gallon gas.

Behind the scenes, however, preparations for Senate floor consideration of the bill caused Senators and their staff to focus on the details of global warming legislation, many for the first time. This not only increased understanding of the legislation, it surfaced the key issues that must be ironed out before a federal climate bill can become law.

A roadmap to these issues can be found in an interesting letter authored by Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan) and signed by nine other Democrats, mostly from Midwestern states. The letter says that these Senators would require changes to the bill before they could support final passage, and highlights eight issues that need to be addressed, including impacts on the economy, technology funding, and the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing. All but one of the Senators signing the letter voted to end the filibuster against the bill so that these issues could be considered in a structured amendment process. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) voted no, citing announcements of plant closings in the last week that could cost Ohio 10,000 jobs.

Equally important, Patriots must rally to demand decisive action to curb global warming pollution and build a new energy economy that will free us from dependence on oil, so that political leaders are motivated to resolve any outstanding issues, rather than use them as excuses for inaction. We are going to need a great ground game to beat the Oilers and get effective legislation across the goal line.

^{_{A paper published last year by two researchers at the University of Chicago (Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin, Earth Interactions Vol. 10, Paper No. 9) suggests that adopting a vegan diet would reduce personal greenhouse gas emissions more than driving a Prius. The paper received a lot of media attention at the time and the claim has been circulating on the web ever since. Unfortunately, the paper relies on quite generic calculations and drastically underestimates emissions from vehicles. Correcting for this, it looks to me like switching to a Prius has about 3 times the impact of switching to a vegan diet. The numbers are of the same order of magnitude, however, and there is a lot of uncertainty in the food calculation. The bottom line will depend on individual factors, such as how much red meat you eat to start with, how many miles you drive, and whether the vehicle you are trading in is a Camry or a Hummer. More details below:}}  

^{_{Eshel and Martin consider all of the greenhouse gas emissions released when raising animals (with the exception of emissions from fertilizer used to grow feed.) They go on to rank the emissions associated with five meat and dairy diets. Assuming you get nearly 30% of your calories from animal sources, poultry is the least carbon intensive diet releasing ~0.8 tons of CO2 eq per year per person more than a vegan diet. Dairy and eggs follow poultry at ~1 ton of CO2 eq/yr/person. Fish comes in third at ~1.1 tons CO2 eq/yr/person and is a tricky case because some species (like swordfish and tuna) require enormous amounts energy to catch while you can get a better return with schools of fish that live close to shore. The mean American diet, which includes poultry and red meat, is ranked 4th releasing about 1.5 tons of CO2 eq/yr/person more than a vegan diet. Finally, the red meat diet is the most carbon intensive, contributing over 2 tons of CO2 eq/yr/person extra emissions.}}

^{_{For the purposes of their comparison the authors subtract their estimate of the CO2 emissions of a Prius (1.19 ton CO2 /year) from the emissions of a Camry (2.24 tons CO2 /year) and they conclude that you would only reduce your CO2 emissions by 1.05 tons per year by investing in a hybrid. These estimate are too low by a factor of 3 to 4, however.}}

^{_{According to www.fueleconomy.gov a Prius releases 4 tons of CO2 eq per year and a Camry releases 7.3 tons of CO2 eq per year. Using the average American light duty vehicle for comparison implies that switching to a Prius reduces emissions by 56%, or 5 tons CO2 eq/yr/vehicle.}}

^{_{There are several reasons for this discrepancy. First, Eshel and Martin calculate that one gallon of gasoline releases 16 lbs of CO2, which is way too low. The EPA looks at the full life cycle of the fuel and estimates that one gallon of gasoline releases 25 lbs of CO2 eq. Second, the EPA estimates that the average driver puts 15,000 miles on his car per year while Eshel and Martin use a per capita number of about 8,000 miles per year (there is room for argument about the appropriate assumption here: in practice buying a hybrid dictates the vehicle emissions for your passengers as well as yourself; choosing your diet only influences yourself unless you dictate the menu for your household). Finally, Eshel and Martin overestimate the fuel economy of all vehicle types because they applied test data without adjusting for real world driving conditions.}}

^{_{The bottom line is that an American eating an average diet and driving 15,000 miles per year in a 20 miles-per-gallon-vehicle will reduce his or her carbon footprint about 3 times as much by switching to a Prius compared to adopting a vegan diet. Nonetheless, raising farm animals does have a huge environmental impact, so reducing your meat consumption, particularly red meat, is good for the health of the planet, and its healthier for you too.}}

Unfortunately this tactic often gets a lot of attention. Witness Jesse Ausubel’s “Renewable and nuclear heresies,” which claims that renewable energy sources are not green, while nuclear power is.

Ausubel reaches this conclusion by elevating energy density (watts per square meter) to the only figure of merit for energy technologies. In doing so, he –

• ignores economies of mass production in favor of economies of scale.
• ignores opportunities to use land for multiple purposes (e.g. roof-top solar and wind farming on farmed land).
• treats all land use as equivalent (e.g. an acre used for a nuclear power plant is equated to an acre of switchgrass used for bioenergy).

Finally, in assessing the land use impacts of nuclear power he only counts the power plant itself, not uranium mining or waste disposal.

The notion that supporting nuclear power is heretical is bizarre to begin with given the $85 billion in subsidies the industry has received over the last 50 years and the fact that it supplies 20% of U.S. electricity today, all without a single plant having been built in a truly competitive market.

Heretic or not, Ausubel simply gets it wrong. Less flamboyant, but better reasoned analysis of the potential for renewables can be found here and the liabilities of nuclear power here.