TOP STORY
Obama considers issuing order adding climate change to environmental impacts reviewed for projects under federal law of NEPA or the National Environmental Policy Act.
The White House is poised to order all federal agencies to evaluate any major actions they take, such as building highways or logging national forests, to determine how they would contribute to and be affected by climate change, a step long sought by environmentalists.
Some view Obama's proposed agency actions as insufficient to remedy our environmental problems. But no individual action is intended as a cure for everything or to replace climate change legislation, but rather is a supplement or link. While NEPA is a procedural law, it is not a paper tiger but a powerful informational tool.
NEPA's primary purpose is to provide the public and federal decision-makers with information about environmental impacts, possible alternatives to a proposed project and mitigation measures that might reduce the impacts so that a decision can be made whether the project should be allowed to proceed given the environmental consequences.
Analysis is documented in an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for all major federal actions that may significantly affect the quality of the human environment, which is defined broadly to include land use, natural resources, species, air quality, water quality, aesthetic, historic, cultural, economic, social and health. The EIS reviews all reasonably foreseeable environmental impacts of the proposed project or action, including direct, indirect and cumulative effects.
There are several benefits from including climate change impacts in NEPA analysis. Armed with information, citizens and environmental groups can cause projects to be delayed or terminated when there is no corporate welfare:
In reality, however, energy, transportation, manufacturing, forest, and agricultural projects may be quite vulnerable to delays associated with agency NEPA compliance or an injunction requiring the federal agency to expand its NEPA analysis to cover potential climate impacts. Faced with an adverse court ruling, the decision to proceed with a project may be revisited by one or more agencies, the corporation or its partners, or financial backers.
NEPA analysis also discloses some of a project's future external costs that corporations relied upon taxpayers to pay often years after project completed. Citizens and groups can use NEPA data about GHG emissions to change laws and policies. Moreover, the data may be beneficial (pdf file) to climate change legislation enacted by Congress.
Obama's order is needed because there is no federal guidance on appropriate climate change analysis in NEPA documents. Since 1990, federal courts have "required agencies to consider GHG emissions under NEPA, but have generally deferred to agencies' climate change assessments." In 1997, the federal agency that implements NEPA drafted guidelines but they were never finalized.
Over the past 6 years, some courts have shown less deference to agency views that climate change impacts are negligible. NEPA litigation has challenged a variety of projects, such as "federal permitting decisions, federal rulemaking, including CAFE standard-setting, federally approved construction projects, federal leases and the federal financing of projects – both overseas and financing for coal power plants in the U.S. Environmentalists have forced agencies to consider climate impacts of projects, such as building a train line to transport more coal to power plants, proposed fuel economy standards for light-duty trucks, or permitting a power plant that would emit GHG.
Obama's order may also address future climate change impacts:
Under the order, agencies would need to account for whether such factors as predicted rises in sea levels would affect proposed new roads along shorelines; or whether, because of temperature changes and species migration, clear-cutting a patch of forest would result in new types of trees replacing the originals.
Some more climate change news from this weekend.
CLIMATE CHANGE & ENERGY
- Climate change far worse: Report on new studies since IPCC 2007 report. The next IPCC report is not until 2013 so a university has compiled the key findings from the last 3 years, which include (more in article linked):
Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were 40 percent higher than in 1990. The recent Copenhagen Accord said warming should be contained within two degrees, but every year of delayed action increases the chances of exceeding the two-degree warming mark.
- Climate pilots show sustainability lifestyle is not oppressive, just different: Climate Pilots is a project where households take a challenge to test and find new ways to cut GHG emissions.
They are Climate Pilots, guinea pigs in a Swedish experiment aimed at helping U.S. citizens understand that a lifestyle that curbs greenhouse-gas emissions is not necessarily oppressive, just different. Whether Americans are willing to follow their example is part of the political calculation lawmakers have to make as they consider imposing nationwide limits on emissions in legislation making its way through Congress.
- Coal Industry's Fuzzy Math Claims State Carbon Neutral Due To Trees. The coal industry argues that "all of West Virginia's trees" (must be minus those clear cut for MTR) absorb enough carbon dioxide to make the state carbon neutral. Some lawmakers apparently buy this spin:
UCS estimates that West Virginia’s forests absorb less than 6 million metric tonnes of CO2 annually. Meanwhile, West Virginia itself burns enough coal to produce just under 91 million metric tonnes of emissions each year. So the industry estimate seems to be off by a factor of 15. Additionally, if you count emissions from coal produced in West Virginia, the state is responsible for 280 million metric tonnes of emissions.
- Emissions Disclosure as a Business Virtue: The Carbon Disclosure Project is the "largest database of primary corporate climate change information in the world." Corporations submit "detailed reports on how much they emit, largely through fossil fuel consumption, to a central clearinghouse" in hopes companies change energy practices before governments finally regulate emissions.
- Shell plans to store 300,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year in depleted gas reservoir underneath Dutch city, residents vow to stop.
- Shell accused of abandoning solar power buyers in the developing world: "Shell has become embroiled in a major row with the World Bank and green energy companies after allegations that it is unfairly refusing to honour warranties on solar power systems sold to the developing world."
- Houston county will use methane gas produced from garbage in landfill to make electricity, flipping from eco cost to source of income.
ECO JUSTICE & SUSTAINABILITY
- Indigenous women empowered by restoring desertified lands; aqueduct built.
Nine hundred women of the Pijao native community plant ecosystem-friendly seeds to grow natural crops without the use of agrochemicals [to regenerate a forest ecosystem to push back advancing desertification].
...Aware of the potable water shortage in the area, Villavicencio used her Spanish citizenship, which she obtained in 1994, to raise funds to build an aqueduct... .
Through Villavicencio's and Múnera's efforts the aqueduct was built without using up all the resources. Some 10,500 dollars were left over, which were "turned into wages for 400 families... ."
- Britain must produce more food to avoid going hungry in future, government to warn: "A soaring global population, climate change, diminishing energy sources and depleted fish stocks mean that society can no longer be complacent about its ability to feed itself."
- Filipino Communities Turn Trash Into Cash: Water lilies grow as high as 40 inches in lakes, displacing local aquatic plants, adversely affecting water quality, and contributing to floods. A water lily livelihood project clears the waterway of lilies while providing a source of income for women:
The project involves collecting the nuisance aquatic plants and turning them into useful products... . [C]ommunity members learned how to weave products like bags, place mats, slippers and Christmas decors like lantern and wreaths out of water lilies.
HUMAN RIGHTS
- Peru's mountain people face fight for survival in a bitter winter.
The few hundred people who live here are hardened to poverty and months of sub-zero temperatures during the long winter. But, for the fourth year running, the cold came early. First their animals and now their children are dying and in such escalating numbers that many fear that life in the village may be rapidly approaching an end.
In a world growing ever hotter, Huancavelica is an anomaly. These communities, living at the edge of what is possible, face extinction because of increasingly cold conditions in their own microclimate, which may have been altered by the rapid melting of the glaciers.
- Charges faced by climate protester in Danish jail dismissed as absurd.
AN AUSTRALIAN remains in a Danish prison three weeks after being arrested for organising a protest against the Copenhagen climate-change conference.
Danish authorities have released other demonstrators, including foreign nationals who were arrested and charged with similar offences before the summit, but Natasha Verco remains in Copenhagen's Vestre Faengsel jail, unable to contact her Australian family or friends.
WILD LIFE & ENDANGERED SPECIES
- 'Scarecrow' wind farms put rare birds to flight.
Britain’s upland birds are in danger of being driven off hills and mountains by onshore wind farms.
Scientists have found that birds, including buzzards, golden plovers, curlews and red grouse, are abandoning countryside around wind farms because the turbines act as giant scarecrows, frightening them away.