Phil Gutis's Blog
Press Clips: We’ve Got It Covered -- Global Warming, Energy Efficiency, Plastic Bags, More
April 18, 2008
Posted by Phil Gutis in The Media and the Environment
With Earth Day only a few hours away, the coverage of all things green is started to explode. Time Magazine’s green coverage leads with a story about how to win the war against global warming and visits with NRDC President Frances Beinecke.
Though a federal cap-and-trade system for carbon would largely be a foray into the unknown, we can examine how the idea is working in the states, many of which are far ahead of Washington. At the New York City headquarters of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), organization president Frances Beinecke shows a map that identifies in green those states that have committed to or are considering mandatory carbon caps. A year ago, the map was mostly white, but now it's less than half. Not only are states coming aboard one at a time, but some are joining in groups, as in the West and Northeast, where regional greenhouse-gas trading blocs are being launched. "The momentum that has built up in the states is unbelievable," says Beinecke.
Further into the article, another NRDC expert talks about an "efficiency surge," or, as Time writes, a "crash improvement that can help offset increase in energy prices and so buy time for the development of carbon free alternatives."
"We need to create breathing room," says Rick Duke, director of NRDC's Center for Market Innovation. "But an unguided market won't take care of that alone."
In U.S. News and World Report, NRDC energy expert Ralph Cavanagh addresses the largely unknown but critical idea of utility decoupling.
But states are changing the way that utilities get paid—decoupling profits from energy consumption—to promote efficiency and curb the need for new power plants. Both Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's campaigns tout the concept. Last year, Connecticut, Idaho, New York, and Vermont chose decoupling, and a dozen other states now are considering jumping on the bandwagon. "It's an idea whose time has come," says Roger Cooper of the American Gas Association, which represents gas utilities. Some states even want to supercharge decoupling, offering rewards to, in the words of Ralph Cavanagh, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, "make utilities motivated partners in energy efficiency."
And in People Magazine's April 21 issue, NRDC’s Darby Hoover illustrates some of the unfortunate life-cycle pitfalls of plastic bags.
Each year Americans consume between 30 and 100 billion plastic bags enough to encircle the planet at least 31 times. They are manufactured using over 12 million barrels of oil, and only a fraction of them make it to the recycling bin. The remainder, according to Darby Hoover of the Natural Resources Defense Council, can take a thousand years to decompose and can clog landfills and litter the oceans killing untold thousands of sea turtles and other animals every year. Even whales have died after ingesting plastic bags that resemble jellyfish. "They create pollution to produce and cause environmental difficulties to dispose of," says Hoover. The plastic plague is so widespread that scientists routinely report seeing bags littering remote Antarctica, carried there by ocean currents.
Finally, Time.com’s green coverage includes a round up of websites well worth visiting, including, happily, our very own Switchboard!
Switchboard's team of more than three dozen writers makes it one-stop shopping for commentary on far-flung topics: what parks add to cities; why greens and business make good bedfellows; why there is a black market for bees. Switchboard is a bullpen of Natural Resources Defense Council specialists monitoring the changes we face within the shadow of a changing climate. Here, the issues that traditionally fall under the increasingly anachronistic category "environment" come to life with level-headed writing, intriguing items and commentary that fall below media radar.
Sample Switchboard post: In a swirl of Rose Garden ceremony, President Bush announced today an eleventh-hour plan for curbing global warming emissions. Unfortunately, it is as feeble as it is late. Now, in his eighth year, the president has proposed a path on global warming weaker than the campaign pledge he made in September of 2000 — the pledge he broke three months into office.
Press Clips is a new feature on Switchboard that will provide a highly selective view of the world as seen through the eyes of NRDC staff quoted by mainstream media outlets. Roundups will appear daily, Monday through Friday.
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