Peter Lehner's Blog: Reviving the World's Oceans

Talking Climate at Poder Magazine's Oceans Forum

2009-08-26T15:14:23Z

In addition to places of wonder and beauty, our oceans are vital economic engines. The U.S. ocean economy contributes more than $230 billion to the nation's GDP annually, providing more more jobs and more economic output than the nation's entire farm sector. Protecting the oceans therefore preserves both an essential element of our natural heritage for future generations as well as sustaining American jobs and revenue.

This week I will join some of the best and the brightest minds in ocean policy, science and business leaders at a forum sponsored by Poder Magazine to address the most pressing issues facing our seas. I will be participating in a roundtable discussion on climate change and the effects of too much carbon pollution on our oceans. I look forward to talking about ocean acidification - also known as "the other carbon problem" - and how pending climate legislation can help address this insidious threat to our seas.

NRDC is fighting on the frontlines of these issues - and the forum happens to come on the heels of our brand new documentary on ocean acidification, ACID TEST, which premiered on Discovery's Planet Green earlier this month.

As most people by now know, burning fossil fuels creates carbon dioxide pollution, the primary cause of global warming. But the consequences don't stop at our atmosphere - approximately one quarter of carbon dioxide emissions are absorbed by the Earth's oceans. This same pollution is profoundly changing ocean chemistry by rapidly making the water more acidic.

When carbon dioxide dissolves into the water at the surface, it creates an acid. There are thousands of species in the ocean that create protective shells to survive, but when the water's acidity gets too high, the animals can't grow shells or shells dissolve. Scientists now believe that unless we slash carbon dioxide pollution quickly, rising acidity may wipeout species that form the foundation of the ocean's food web. Corals, plankton, shellfish and all of the ocean life that depend on them are at risk.

America needs strong climate and energy legislation to reduce ocean acidification - in addition to strengthening our economy, breaking our dependence on oil, and reducing global warming pollution. This bill will help jumpstart our economy, make America a leader in clean energy for the 21st Century, and bring us closer to a future of healthy oceans.

Fortunately, the House of Representatives steered us in the right direction by passing the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act earlier this summer. ACES will reduce the pollution that causes ocean acidification and global warming by setting national limits on carbon emissions for the first time ever in America. The bill reduces carbon emissions 17% by 2020, and that target goes up to 80% by 2050. Now, we will look to the Senate leadership to strengthen the bill, and follow through on its enormous promise to lead our country in a new direction - toward a future of clean energy and healthy oceans.

It took hard work to ensure that this bill reflects the views of many different voices and regions from across America. Now there is growing momentum across the country - including business leaders, entrepreneurs, labor, faith groups, veterans, and many others - for action on clean energy and climate. I hope you'll join NRDC as we turn to the Senate, and fight hard to strengthen and swiftly pass strong climate legislation to help avoid the worst impacts of climate change and acidification.

In addition to curbing CO2 emissions, which is all-important, we also need to make the oceans more resilient so that they are better able to withstand the impacts of global warming and ocean acidification. Just like a healthy person is better able to handle an illness, a healthy ecosystem is better able to withstand additional stress. President Obama is showing exactly the kind of leadership we need to save our seas and revive our Great Lakes by pursuing an overarching national policy for these resources. On June 12, he issued a Presidential Memorandum calling for the development of a national policy to protect and restore the health of marine and coastal ecosystems, and an interagency taskforce is now in the process of developing specific recommendations on how to implement such a policy. We hope President Obama will issue an Executive Order formally establishing a national oceans, coasts, and Great Lakes policy to protect, maintain, and restore the health of these ecosystems - and all that depend on them. You can join us in telling the President you want to see this happen here.

By taking these steps to make our seas more resilient against the myriad threats they face, and by curbing carbon emissions - we can help guarantee the health of our oceans and a sustainable future for ourselves.

Let's Respect the Public With More Information

2008-06-30T14:00:00Z

We need a lot more environmental information to begin to address the lack of public understanding of environmental harms.

This may seem obvious, but it isn’t. At a meeting a few years ago, I was shocked to find the head of a state water agency opposed to an effort to provide the public with more information on sewage overflows. His argument was that he didn’t want to scare the public, and that the public wasn’t sophisticated enough to understand the information.

About our families swimming in sewage, I thought?

Sewage overflows happen much more frequently than they should. In the Clean Water Act of 1972, Congress set a goal for our waters to be fishable and swimmable by 1983. Yet today, fewer than one half of our waters have even been assessed. Of those, only about half meet their designated uses. And for most of those, the designated use is something less than fishable and swimmable.

Take our beaches, for example. In 2007, the NRDC released the results of our annual water quality survey. The results were startling. In 2006, pollution caused a record number of beach closings nationwide. Closing and advisory days topped 25,000 – more than had ever been recorded in the survey’s 17-year history. The public needs to know about this. And yet, agencies are wary of releasing information that would hold them responsible.

In one EPA negotiated undertaking I was involved with, we were discussing the possibility of electronic filing of permit applications, permits, and monitoring data. Many dischargers were first supportive – after all, it would save them time and money. But once they realized that if electronically filed it would be easily accessible, they changed their minds. They knew that publicly available information leads to more awareness, more attention, and more enforcement. They were not sure that was good.

In my opinion, this is backwards. If there is a concern about the reaction, the answer is to provide the public with more, or better, information, not less. We should have more respect for the public.

To solve this problem, we need to begin by providing the public with more information – much more information than they currently have. But we also need to provide them with better information. It’s not just about quantity, but quality. The information should be about the full range of effects – health, environmental, cultural – and not just about the associated costs.

And we need to make the information available. The internet is a truly terrific opportunity for this (if you’re reading this blog, I hope you’ll agree). Environmental information should all be up on the web so anyone can find out about the permit (or lack of a permit) for the factory or whatever is down the street from one of their kids’ schools.

This is one of NRDC’s goals. We believe that an informed citizenry is an active citizenry – one more likely to hold the federal government to its promise of providing clean water for our families, and for our kids.

We Can’t Drill To Lower Fuel Prices

2008-06-20T14:39:32Z

Yesterday, I wrote a post about the need to limit opening additional federal lands to offshore drilling. Two comments got me thinking, and made me want to expand upon my thoughts here.

One commenter named Wayne said, “What this country needs is leadership and a multi-facted approach to solve our problems which involves oil drilling in the USA.” I agree with the need for leadership, Wayne – that’s why we at NRDC have worked for decades on energy issues, and why we’re now advocating a national energy plan that engages multiple sectors of the economy.

But President Bush’s proposal is not an example of leadership. The message that fuel prices are high because oil companies don’t have enough land is false, and won’t provide relief to the American people. We simply can’t drill our way to lower prices. We have to seek other, more energy efficient alternatives. This is the fastest, and cheapest way to lower fuel prices and combat climate change.

And yet, many members of Congress are now lining up to push for a repeal of the ban on opening more federal lands to offshore drilling. As the two comments, and other articles on the web illustrate, there’s substantive debate on this issue.

And so why do I oppose opening additional, ecologically sensitive areas to offshore drilling?

Consider that companies already have more than enough resources available to them. Between 1999 and 2007, the number of drilling permits issued for development of public lands increased by more than 361%. In the last four years, the BLM has issued 10,000 more permits than have been used. That means the oil and gas companies are actually stockpiling extra permits, and that these companies hold leases to nearly 68 million acres that are not in production.

This is particularly true for offshore areas. On the outer continental shelf, there are 7,740 active leases and only 1,655 in production. Only 10.5 million of the 44 million offshore leased acres are currently producing oil or gas. Moreover, four times more natural gas is contained within the waters already open to drilling than in those protected by the ban.

We should not give these companies more land when they already have more land than they can use.

Even if we did open the ecologically sensitive areas currently under a moratorium, it wouldn’t lower fuel prices. In the past two years, domestic oil and gas production has outpaced domestic consumption fourfold. In the mean time, fuel prices have soared. If you look to the UK, to Norway, Germany and Japan – all countries that promote offshore drilling – you’ll see their prices are much higher.

I’m not alone in saying this. Click here for a great report on the topic, released by the House Committee on Natural Resources this June. The Energy Information Administration, the independent statistical agency within the U.S. Department of Energy, says drilling offshore won’t help prices. And yesterday, in an editorial entitled “The Big Pander to Big Oil,” The New York Times described opening additional areas to offshore drilling by saying:

“This is worse than a dumb idea. It is cruelly misleading. It will make only a modest difference, at best, to prices at the pump, and even then the benefits will be years away. It greatly exaggerates America’s leverage over world oil prices. It is based on dubious statistics. It diverts the public from the tough decisions that need to be made about conservation.”

We can’t drill our way to lower fuel prices. As I’ve said before, efficiency is the fastest, and cheapest, way to lower fuel costs and combat global warming.

I have a lot to say on the topic of how efficiency can help meet our national energy goals. I’ll expand on that in another post soon.

Dear President Bush: No More Offshore Drilling

2008-06-18T22:03:06Z

Earlier today, President Bush called upon Congress to lift a ban on offshore oil drilling that was enacted more than 25 years ago. Since then, every President has extended the moratorium – first by President Bush’s father, in 1990, and then by President Clinton, in 1998.

They extended the ban for good reason. Offshore drilling is an enormously wasteful and dangerous means of energy production. Between 1980 and 1999, 73 offshore oil spills dumped millions of gallons of oil into our waters. Offshore drilling is associated with air pollution and land degradation, and with seismic activity that has been shown to have profound, even fatal, effects on marine mammals.

Nor will it do anything to reduce the price of gas or increase our energy independence, as my colleague Deron Lovaas said today. According to most estimates, it will take at least seven to ten years for the oil to go into production and even then it wouldn’t reduce energy prices.

And so what is this about? With oil hitting $130 a barrel, these are desperate times for the White House. For a former oil-man from Texas, the solution to an oil crisis means helping the oil industry, not the American public. As Ross Gelbspan said in his book Boiling Point, “Today, the White House has become the East Coast branch office of ExxonMobil and Peabody coal, and climate change has become the preeminent case study of the contamination of our political system by money.”

So let’s recognize President’s call to Congress for what it is: a political play for short-term gain that will do little to reduce gas prices over the short or the long-term. What this country needs is a plan to reduce our energy consumption. It doesn’t need another desperate move to help the oil industry.

NRDC has a plan. Solving the energy crisis should begin with energy efficiency. We need to improve the energy efficiency of our vehicles, our businesses and our homes. The cheapest, cleanest and quickest energy we can produce is the energy we save through efficiency.

In the short-term, energy efficiency can be achieved much more quickly than drilling for oil. In the long-term, it can reduce consumption, ease demand, and help to lower the price of fuel.

To get there:

We need to put a cap on carbon. The science is in; we can’t continue emitting at current rates.
We need to unleash the potential of current, available technology by getting it off the shelves and into the streets.
Third, and related to the issue of efficiency, is the need increase our investment in technology innovation. We need to work towards creating a low-carbon infrastructure in the US.

We have the opportunity to set this country in a new direction. That direction is based upon an energy policy that will solve global warming, enhance national security, and boost our economy. Energy efficiency has a leading role to play in that future; opening our oceans and our coasts to drilling does not.