Which is more important to North America, fresh water or more oil?
Tar Sands. NRDC has pressed discussion and analysis of Tar Sands in multiple policy papers, advocacy briefings, legislative testimony, community meetings, and litigation. And, of course, here on Switchboard; how it is responsible for 3 times more greenhouse gas pollution as conventional crude oil, how it's extraction is destroying vast swaths of Canada and maybe creating mutant fish, how it might adversely affect communities that are already struggling, and how investments in its dirty infrastructure retards the growth of the clean energy economy we so desperately need in this country. But the University of Toronto's report entitled How the Oil Sands got to the Great Lakes Basin: Pipelines, refineries and emissions to air and water sets the scene for a much more urgent discussion.
Is our thirst for oil powerful enough to jeopardize the Great Lakes, which represent 1/5 of the world's fresh water?
In the University of Toronto report, researchers spell out how new transcontinental pipelines stretching from Alberta into the heart of Great Lakes and massive refinery expansions in the U.S. Midwest are creating a "pollution delivery system" that threatens our air and water quality, as well as human health in the region. The report outlines significant and growing damage already underway from refineries and pipelines---and calls for more research on the particular health threats that are likely unique to low grade bitumen products.
We know CO2 and an ugly array of pollutants will be raining down into the lakes as the expansions move forward, we know because the refineries have asked for permission to do this in the form of air and water pollution permits.
I am still making my way through the University of Toronto's report, and while it is gratifying to see NRDC's battle for stricter air permits for BP's Whiting, IN refinery and our recent settlement with ConocoPhillips cited as lone bright spots in the story, the narrative itself is otherwise fairly scary. It tells the same tale as NRDC's Midwest program has since its inception: the use of tar sands speeds climate change, destroys one of the most precious ecosystems on Earth, and forces disproportionate costs on the communities impacted by tar sands in the form of public health and environmental degradation.
That means that if you live near one of the massive refineries that are being retooled to deal with this stuff, you are going to be seeing more asthma and respiratory problems in your community. And we can't forget that if we let nasty pollutants go up into the air all around the Great Lakes---well, what goes up, must come down---and it will come down, into the drinking water source for ore than 30 million Americans (and plenty of Canadians too). If you live in the Midwest, you should be paying attention.
Last week there was much rejoicing when the Great Lakes Compact was signed. But the protections that were put in place are likely moot if we are going to allow our waters to be fouled by aggressively supporting the infrastructure for, what the report calls, a "pollution delivery system."
There is good news. In Canada, there is a growing awakening to the dangers present within their borders. I have talked to Canadian journalists trying to understand how the tar sands affect their nation's image internationally. And the opinion pages of Canadian newspapers reflect an ever-more conflicted public trying to weigh the undeniable environmental impacts against the economic windfall of oil.
In the U.S., the media is starting to pick up on the inherent problems of trying to fighting climate change while the oil companies and many in our government are advocating for the dirtiest fuel sources they can find. Reports like this one support and reinforce the arguments that NRDC is making in Indiana, Illinois, and DC.
We recently filed suit against the State Department over the proposed Keystone pipeline, which would move dirty tar sands oil from Alberta to Illinois for refining. When signing the treaties, the State Department treated the pipeline as though it was a benign tube, with limited environmental impacts. We will be arguing that activities past the ends of the tube need to be considered, so stay tuned!
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So, call me a booster, but I am extremely proud of the city's new effort to protect our uniquely Midwestern meteorological identity. The Chicago Climate Action Plan was released last week, outlining the aggressive CO2 reductions and infrastructure changes that the city feels are essential if we are going to beat climate change.
I think the narrative of the plan is remarkable.
What does climate change mean in an urban center far from rising coastlines and melting glaciers? In the case of Chicago, it is the addition of up to 30 days of 90+ degree temperatures---and with appropriate Chicago pragmatism, the costs incurred by the city are outlined, along with the financial impacts of erratic and violent weather and shifting growing zones. It shows in a very concrete fashion what the roll of cities must be in addressing climate change.
I was particularly struck by a section of the Mayor's introduction in the document:
In Chicago we have long appreciated that cities are no longer the enemies of the natural environment; rather they're leading the way in preserving and protecting it. Since I have been mayor, my goal has been to make Chicago a shining example of how a large city can live in harmony with its environment and as a result, be a better place for all its residents. I am confident that if we address the climate change challenge together, with creativity and boldness, then our city will continue to lead the world in designing a path to a more secure future.
The plan goes on to show how the specter of climate change makes cities more important than ever. The density of a place like Chicago makes the efficiencies in transit, energy delivery, and large buildings a potential treasure trove of saved energy and emissions. And that is the power of this plan---it is Kaid's blog come to life. Improve the trains and bus service so that we can get some of the cars off the road. Aggressively retrofit buildings to make them more energy efficient to eliminate some of the emissions from power generation (I hope to blog a bit about the Clinton Foundation-funded retrofits of the Sears Tower and Merchandise Mart pretty soon). Use the energy resources that are out there in solar and wind. Those are all in the plan---which reads a lot like the McKinsey Report that NRDC has been widely disseminating as a national plan to deal with the same issues.
Cities are where the rubber meets the road. And as this plan shows, municipal governments can make substantial impacts while also making their towns a better place to live. Can we really make a difference by changing building codes and throwing solar panels around? This plan says, "yes."
Chicago, and Mayor Daley in particular, have been criticized for green washing the city; investing in big visible projects like the green roof on city hall that give cover for broader problems. But let's be clear, this plan is substantial and well-thought out with the sort of detailed focus on infrastructure that the policy folks here at NRDC love. Kudos to the mayor and his Chief Environmental Officer Sadhu Johnston---the document is not perfect, but it is aggressive and smart.
Certainly, there are problems and curious gaps. With its aggressive goals, why doesn't the City target expedited closure of the antiquated, polluting Crawford and Fisk coal power plants that have been belching filth in our air since Sam Insull sited them in the early 1900's? Regulatory changes on mercury pollution MAY shutter the plants by 2018---but that is too long to wait. The plan should have sent a more aggressive signal that we are going to address climate change, by addressing all the root causes---particularly the major sources of climate pollution.
Important gaps aside, the City's plan is a solid, important commitment.
I love this city. Sure there is crime. The winters are a drag. The Chicago River is an embarrassment, with all of its un-disinfected sewage...and lately the Bears have been too...
But I just can't see moving anywhere else. Yet, as the plan notes, if we do not get things under control quickly, Chicago's climate will change dramatically---feeling a lot more like Baton Rouge. Nothing against Louisiana, but that's just not what I signed up for---so I thank the mayor for his leadership and aggressive action. Hopefully it works so that I don't have to head for Manitoba to enjoy the glorious Midwestern fall season.
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What connects the Dutch oil giant with a washed up, but much-beloved hip hop duo? Forced choice.
Black Sheep's rap:
You can get with this, or you can get with that
I think you'll get with this, for this is where it's at
Shell’s rap boils down to something similar; with the insane idea that only an embrace of Canadian tar sands oil will protect us from the scourge of coal:
Shell warned environmentalists and ethical investors yesterday that failure to exploit tar sands and other unconventional oil products would worsen climate change because it would lead to the world burning even more carbon-heavy coal.
Jeroen van der Veer, Shell's chief executive, said the world needed every kind of energy source it could find at a time of soaring demand. He said groups that had threatened to organise a ban on alternative fossil fuels should be careful because without unconventionals "the balancing fuel will be coal"
So…Alberta’s goo---responsible for three times the CO2 emissions of traditional oil, toxic lakes, and toppled forests---will save us from the climate changing threat of coal? You can get with coal. Or you can get with crude…
Of course not. That is the false choice, and it underscores the ongoing problem in our national energy debate. Choosing between dirty and dirtier fuels is not a choice. Neither coal nor heavy crude oil from the tar sands are reasonable long-term energy choices. It is an effort to prolong, rather than address, the untenable energy status quo. And it is an insult to American ingenuity, implying we cannot break our energy conundrum without scraping the bottom of the barrel.
We need to insist on real solutions to our very real energy problems. In the short-term, that is in large part about figuring how to use less. Bob Herbert’s column in the New York Times this week lamented how the lack of sexiness to efficiency programs is preventing us from taking the fastest and most impactful steps available to us right now. Perhaps if Paris Hilton took up the efficiency cause that would change, since the media is falling all over themselves to report her energy plan (the Chicago Tribune is already pushing her for the next Energy Secretary post...)
But in the meantime, we need to make sure that we look at all the options; not just those that are focused on burning our way out. The choice is ours.
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Had the wise residents of this northern Illinois town erected a loofah levee?
Or rigged a mound of porous kitchen cleaners to fight off the rising Des Plaines River?
What was this amazingly absorbent technology that saved the town from the watery fate that has doomed so many other towns in Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri of late?
The answer, it turned out, was much simpler.
While severe flooding plagued communities on nearby waterways, the Lake County News-Sun reported that Gurnee’s Mayor Kristina Kovarik credited her town’s dry streets to the natural protections afforded by nearby wetlands:
She attributed this to preventive flood mitigation measures that were initiated by county officials and municipalities more than a decade ago. She particularly praised the effectiveness of the Des Plaines Wetlands Demonstration Project upriver in the Wadsworth area.
"These wetlands serve as a giant sponge for us in controlling the flow of the Des Plaines River. They are an excellent shock absorber," Kovarik said.
The wetlands project dates back to the 1970s when the state commissioned a feasibility study to determine how wetland and river restoration can increase flood control, improve water quality, expand wildlife habitat and encourage recreational use, instead of just building more concrete dams. The 550-acre site along the Des Plaines River is owned by the Lake County Forest Preserve District and managed by Wetland Research Inc. The project has achieved many of its objectives and has saved millions of dollars by preventing flood damage.
As the mayor noted, streams and wetlands are natural flood protections. They act as a sponge to clean and hold water in heavy rain events. Unfortunately, we have ripped out roughly half of our wetlands in the lower 48 states.
Yesterday, I took part in a news conference to make the public aware of the fight over legislation that could make a difference in this area. The Clean Water Restoration act is an effort to clarify and reaffirm the original intentions of the Clean Water Act. In the light of Midwestern floods, the legislation is necessary to reinforce protections for our natural flood buffers---particularly since so few remain.
The federal government has recently released studies that show a likely increase in violent weather patterns, such as flooding. Instead of developing in oft-drenched flood plains, perhaps it is time to heed the lessons learned in Gurnee. A return of some land to the original flood-absorbing wetlands might make sense in many places. But let’s make sure that the few that remain are afforded the maximum legal protections.
After all, Gurnee is not the only sponge-worthy town around!
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The CW network played the finale of its dating reality show, “Farmer Wants a Wife.”
And The Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) released “Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate.”
What do they have in common? Well, the CCSP report showed that we will be seeing more and more violent weather events as a result of global warming. And the farmer? Well, he seems to be suffering from the sort of violent weather that the report focuses on---a dose of reality for reality TV…
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Matt Neustadt---the farmer who wants a wife---did not get a chance to watch his show’s finale because he was desperately trying to save his crops from impending flood waters:
"We were trying to cut wheat late that night because of the high water they were predicting," Neustadt said.
Forty percent of his family farm is under water right now and he will lose most of this year’s crops. His farm sits near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, so occasional floods are not a surprise:
"I'm not going to complain too much; that's just part of living in a flood plain," he said.
That’s a healthy response, but shouldn’t the CCSP report be setting off alarm bells here? More violent weather. More tornadoes. More hurricanes. More floods.
While the mantra remains that no specific weather event can be attributed to global warming, Newsweek reports on an Iowa State professor who claims that the floods in his area are directly tied to global warming.
So we are likely to hear the terms “500-year floods” and “storms of the century” bandied about more often.
We already use floodplain maps to determine limitations on where to build, flood insurance, and added environmental regulations. The impact of flooding is also noted in broader 100- and 500-year flood plains. (Contrary to the straight-forward naming, a 100-year flood is not the biggest storm in a century; it relates to the percent chance that waters will inundate an area in a 100 year time span.)
Given the potential for more frequent flooding, it might be time to re-map those flood plains. FEMA had already started the process---but they were focused on crumbling infrastructure. But the climate change news makes these discussions all the more important as those lines are redrawn and billions in flood relief dollars are dolled out after the waters recede.
Otherwise, down the line farmers like Matt might be looking for more than just a wife… They might be looking for new farms, farm houses, and farm land…
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That was all my worried sister-in-law heard from her former neighbors in Iowa City after calling to check up on them. The Iowa River runs through the leafy college town and after weeks of rain it has risen to 31.5 feet above flood stage, inundating much of the town and University of Iowa campus. Later, she had a chance to catch up with her drenched former neighbors and heard the same painful stories that are sadly common throughout the Midwest this week.
Both of her former homes had been affected by the rising river. Earlier in the week, police pounded on doors in the middle of the night to hurriedly evacuate the neighborhood and her old house was soon swamped by the flood. And the landmark apartment building she had lived in for a time had waters lapping at the top of the steps, despite sitting at the peak of a huge hill overlooking much of the now-submerged town.
The horrible damage is not limited to Iowa City. Most of the state is waterlogged, with the governor declaring 83 of 99 counties as disaster areas. Over 36,000 people are left homeless. And damage is already being estimated in the hundreds of millions to buildings and infrastructure---billions when you factor in this year's lost corn crop. And it will only get worse as the Mississippi is set to crestat levels not seen since the horrific floods of 1993.
My mother flew over the carnage from the 1993 flood in a National Guard helicopter to survey damage to Illinois historic sites. She came back shaken from the experience of seeing coffins that had been floated out of their graves making their way down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico amidst neon glowing water flush with myriad chemicals.
At the time, the 1993 flood was being described as the flood of the century.
Only fifteen years later, Iowa's governor described this year's weather as a "500-year storm."
Unfortunately, these events are likely to become more and more common. While no single weather event can be attributed to global warming, scientists agree that we are likely to see more and more in the way of violent weather patterns as a result of climate change.
We all saw the devastation in New Orleans. Expect the same slow, painful recovery in the flood zones of Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri. After the flood waters recede, the cameras will go away too. That is when the worst of the floods' damage will be revealed. My mom was astonished by the damage left in the wake of the ’93 flood:
Trees went into hibernation for years. There were objects of every kind hanging from the limbs—chicken coops, clothes, toys, window shutters –everything imaginable. And the filth and stench left behind by the toxic water was awful. I feel great empathy for the people in Iowa and the other flooded states. They have months, and maybe even years, of clean up and repairs ahead of them. It is a daunting and exhausting task to put your life back together after this kind of destruction and displacement.
We cannot stop the floods ravaging the Midwest right now, but we can take action to help prevent future grief and loss by actively moving ahead with efforts to address the climate change issue immediately. Certainly, any assertion that the increase in violent storms we have seen this year are directly related to climate change are anecdotal---but there is no denying that, as the New York Times’ Dot Earth blog pointed out today, global warming will result in more dangerous weather patterns. Hotter air holds more water. And hot air loaded with water vapor is the stuff of raging storms…
We must work to ensure that the devastation in Iowa is not a prelude to more common events in our future. If we continue to sandbag on climate change now, we are guaranteed to be a lot more desperate when we sandbag to protect our homes in the future…
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BP could learn a lot from the late, great, Godfather of Soul.
Last week was a very good one for the British oil giant. Tuesday, BP announced that they had brought in a jaw-dropping $6.59 BILLION profit in the last three months (that is more than many countries’ annual GDP).
And Thursday, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) surprised everyone by awarding BP an air pollution permit for expansion of its refinery in Whiting, IN. The fact that the permit was awarded was not the surprise---how could an agency charged with improving Hoosier’s household income stand in the way of a big project, no matter how dangerous or dirty? Instead, the move was shocking due to the speed of turning around the woefully inadequate permit, as well as IDEM’s willingness to completely ignore the significant concerns expressed by NRDC and a veritable cornucopia of other environmental and community groups. Ann Alexander, the lead attorney on the challenge likened it to “drive by permitting.”
The air permit gives BP the green light to move forward on an expansion project to make the already dirty refinery into the nation’s biggest tar sands oil processor. That’s right; one of the dirtiest facilities in the country has gotten permission to get dirtier. And they are spending billions of dollars to process the dirtiest oil around, spewing all the climate changing and disease-causing pollutants that come with it. More arsenic, lead, sulfur, and CO2 for everyone in densely packed northwest Indiana (and just 20 miles from Chicago).
What does that have to do with the “Hardest Working Man in Show Business?” Brown and his backing bands crisscrossed America putting on the same legendary high-energy live shows everywhere they stopped. He was always at the center of the show, but Soul Brother #1 knew that he needed to take care of his supporting cast, the audience, and everyone who made it all happen. Everyone in the band needed a little time in the spotlight…even the drummer, who always seems to be ignored and overlooked.
BP should follow that lead---take care of everyone impacted by the refinery. You’d think that being flush with cash would allow BP to invest in the best possible facilities to protect the folks living closest to the expanded refinery. “Can’t the drummer have some?”
But the Whiting Refinery still falls short of existing Clean Air Act regulations. The 100+ year old facility is behind similar facilities in the Bay area of California where simple structural improvements and best practices are being employed to minimize the impact on the surrounding populations and environment. Why do the people of San Francisco deserve stronger protections than the folks in Gary, Indiana?
In NRDC’s challenge to BP’s air permit a number of simple changes were suggested to prevent flaring---the use of those big torches that burn off excess gases and kick out massive volumes of pollution in the process. Looking out for the communities around the refinery is largely an issue of using good engineering design and practices to avoid unnecessary flaring. Adequate compressor capacity and backup compressors are essential to minimize flaring, and not very expensive to add. But BP chooses not to make the investment. Same goes for recycling some of the gases produced in the refinery, rather than simply sending them out the smokestack. No interest from BP. In fact, NRDC suggested an assortment of processes, work practices, and analyses that seem natural for an efficient business...but when you make a boatload of cash, I guess that sort of thing seems less important...
Instead of using those billions of dollars to protect communities like Chesterton, Hobart, Hammond, and Chicago’s south side, BP pushes for permit requirements that the cash-starved state government all too willingly applies. That leaves some of America’s hardest-working families paying for those profits with their health. As JB would say, the deal is “Super Bad.”
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