On August 21st, the Thai based energy company PTTEP announced that a “crude oil gas leak incident occurred” in the Timor Sea about 155 miles northwest of Western Australia.  The energy company’s press released continued that “the size of the spill is not known.  Aproximately 40 barrels of oil were discharged from the wellhead in the initial incident.”  In the ensuing month, it has become clear that this oil spill is much more serious than initially thought:

Aerial Photo of the oil spill from the drilling platform in the Timor Sea (Source: SkyTruth)

1. As of September 25th, photos from NASA satellites document that the oil slicks and sheen from the spill covered 9,870 square miles, an area even bigger than the state of Vermont.  Part of the oil sheen has been moving perilously close to the Cartier Island Marine Reserve.
2. According to conservative estimates by the World Wildlife Fund, the rig has been leaking 400 barrels a day — over 14,000 barrels since late August.  That equates to about 600,000 gallons of oil.
3. When the spill was first reported, the government of Australia predicted it would take 7 weeks to clean up.   Already, it has been 5 weeks and the spill isn’t contained.

This devastating spill may be a world away but US ocean waters, including Georges Bank and the rest of the Gulf of Maine, are also at risk because they no longer are protected from the devastating impacts of oil and gas extraction. As a parting gift before leaving office, President Bush lifted the Presidential Moratorium on drilling for oil and natural gas on the Outer Continental Shelf that had been in place since 1990.  On September 30, 2008, Congress followed suit and lifted a longstanding legislative ban on offshore oil and gas leasing as part of a large government operations appropriations bill.  As a result, important habitat in the Gulf of Maine, including Georges Bank — one of the world’s premier fishing grounds — is at risk of industrial scale fossil fuel energy development.

As the Saudi oil fields are tapped out, there is increased pressure to drill in remote areas of the ocean.  For example, at the beginning of September, BP announced a “giant oil discovery” 35,055 feet below the Gulf of Mexico seafloor, which itself is already 4,132 feet below the surface of the ocean.  In an ironic twist of fate, just as the ocean is beginning to bear the brunt of the impacts of climate change (see my earlier blog post on ocean acidification), oil companies are stepping up efforts to locate and drill for oil and gas under the seafloor.

Clearly we need energy — but how do we design a sustainable, climate neutral ocean energy solution that will not put important marine wildlife, habitat and ecosystems at risk? As Greg Watson, then a VP at the Mass Technology Collaborative, noted, New England (and Massachusetts in particular) is “the ‘Saudi Arabia of Wind.’” Of course, we need to responsibly tap this renewable resource — we can’t build wind farms wholesale across the region just because there is a lot of wind on the ocean.  Rather, we need to engage in a thorough marine spatial planning process whereby different human uses and ecological resources are identified and mapped and responsible renewable energy development is sited in a way that doesn’t create unreasonable impacts on those activities or natural resources.  Massachusetts is in the process of doing just that — and has released the first in the nation Draft Ocean Management Plan.  In Maine, the governor appointed an Ocean Energy Task Force to evaluate how to develop offshore renewable energy.  Rhode Island is working on an Ocean Special Area Management Plan (SAMP) in part to promote offshore renewable energy development.  Finally, at the federal level, President Obama issued an Executive Memorandum calling for a national ocean policy and marine spatial planning  framework.  CLF is working on all of these issues.

Imagine if all of Vermont were covered in an oil spill.  Well it has been over a month and an equally large spill in the Timor Sea hasn’t been contained.  Oil and gas drilling is still a risky business and, thanks to former President Bush and Congress, these projects are allowable in US ocean waters.  A concerted effort is needed to make oil and gas drilling old news.  We need to usher in a new era of responsible, climate friendly, renewable ocean energy development.  Help CLF make this a reality!

What can you do to help promote responsible marine renewable energy Development?

1. Sign the CLF Ocean Petition
2. Learn more about the Massachusetts Draft Ocean Management Plan, Maine Ocean Energy Task Force, Rhode Island Ocean Special Area Management Plan and the National Ocean Policy and Marine Spatial Framework.
3. Learn more about the Timor Sea Spill

Satellite Image of the oil spill in the Timor Sea. Northwest Australia is in the lower right hand corner of the photo (Source: SkyTruth)

Popularity: 5% [?]

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), in an order issued on September 18, 2009, has sided with the operator of the New England electricity system (ISO-NE) in a dispute with Dominion, the owner of the Salem Harbor Power Plant.

Here is the basic situation:  Dominion has “de-listed” the Salem Harbor Power Plant in the upcoming “Forward Capacity Auction”.   This means that it is virtually certain that in the 2012-2013 period that the plant will not be obligated to run and will not received capacity payments that power plants receive when they have such an obligation.   While the plant could still run and be paid for the electricity it made the act of de-listing means that the owner of the plant thinks there is a significant chance it will not be running during that year.  If, however, ISO-NE, finds that one (or more) of the  power generating units at the plant are “needed for reliability” then Dominion would receive payments set at the level of the “de-list bids” submitted this year.

Here is the dispute:  ISO-NE argued that Dominion had set the amount of its “de-list bids” to high.  Dominion had calculated those bids assuming that all pollution control equipment put into the plant would have to be depreciated (basically paid off) within three years.  ISO-NE argued that this was inappropriate. Local newspapers took note of this dispute.

CLF, and the Massachusetts Attorney Generals office, agreed with ISO-NE that Dominion’s bids were inappropriate.  CLF, pressing beyond the polite wording of ISO-NE’s filing, argued that the only appropriate circumstance for the “super-accelerated depreciation” being sought by Dominion would be appropriate only if Dominion were proposing to permanently de-list the plant.  The absurdity of Dominion’s position was highlighted by the fact that it was contradicted by public statements of its own spokesman in a local newspaper.

The Mass. AG, supported by CLF, also raised concerns about the lack of public disclosure of key information about the plant and the lack of auditing of the representations that plant owners like Dominion made to ISO-NE.

FERC, in the order resolving the dispute, accepted the basic logic that ISO-NE and CLF presented, requiring use of the longer depreciation period proposed by ISO-NE.   FERC stated that it could not consider converting a de-list bid from being one-year to permanent at this point in the process – which is essentially a moot point as CLF floated that as an idea that would only apply if the shorter depreciation period was accepted, which it was not. Also, FERC did not squarely address the issues of public disclosure and auditing, relying on earlier decisions that will be continued to be criticized.

But in the end this was squarely a defeat for Dominion: their bluff of calculating costs as if the plant was shutting down, but not actually committing to do so, was called.

These battles will continue.  The likely next dispute will center around “reliability” as all of these numbers games are meaningless if ISO-NE recognizes that the improved transmission system, new generation and rising amounts of energy efficiency and “demand response” (slashing energy use at peak hours during the summer) means that the plant can retire without causing any shortages in the regional electricity system.  They are very close to doing so (having found that other nearby plants can safely retire) and are likely to reach the right result here – although it might take some encouragement.

Popularity: 4% [?]

In an insightful reaction to President Obama’s health care speech to a joint session of Congress, noted author Michael Pollan (Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food) said something very provocative on the pages of the New York Times.  Unlike South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson, he didn’t accuse the president of lying.  But he did make pretty clear that the health care debate thus far has ignored a very significant part of the problem: an acknowledgment that our transformation into a fast food nation is playing a huge role in making health care more costly and less accessible for all Americans.

In his Op-ed titled “Big Food vs. Big Insurance“, he writes:

Cheap food is going to be popular as long as the social and environmental costs of that food are charged to the future. There’s lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry.

He’s got a very compelling point, and it becomes even more compelling if you follow the “environmental costs” thread that he mentions only in passing.

Much of federal food policy is all about subsidies for corn, both as a feed crop for fatty meats raised under inhumane conditions on “factory farms” and for use in the ubiquitous sweetener high-fructose corn syrup found in calorie-laden soda and other processed foods throughout the supermarket.  Most of the corn grown in this country requires intensive application of nutrient-rich fertilizers, especially those with nitrogen.  A lot of the fertilizer gets dumped into rivers either through excess application onto the fields or through the mishandling of manure from the animals who eat all that corn without fully digesting the nutrients.

The water pollution problems caused by our heavily-subsidized fertilizer- intensive agriculture only serve to exacerbate our reliance on cheap and unhealthy food.  The result are seasonal “dead zones“: areas in polluted waterbodies like the Gulf of Mexico where algae blooms fed by the fertilizer runoff deplete waters of oxygen that fish need to live.  So to grow corn to fuel the increasing consumption of unhealthy process foods and soda related to the explosion of costly and increasingly-common health problems like Type 2 diabetes, we’re using fertilizers that destroy the capacity of fisheries to provide alternative sources of much healthier nutrition.  A vicious cycle if ever there was one.

Self-defeating food policies that poison and destroy fisheries aren’t the only link to rising health care costs.  As CLF reported in our “Conservation Matters” article on mercury pollution, “there is a high correlation between children with mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and other neurological disorders and mothers who have ingested high amounts of methylmercury from poisoned fish and water.”  To prevent these costly, life-long health conditions Northeastern states warn pregnant women and young children not to eat freshwater fish from the over “10,000 lakes, ponds, and reservoirs, as well as more than 46,000 miles of river deemed too toxic for fish consumption.” The pollution comes from coal-fired power plants whose owners refuse to sacrifice a small part of their enormous profits to install readily-available mercury pollution controls. CLF is continuing to fight for tougher mercury standards in hopes that New England’s freshwater fisheries–a historical source of great sustenance for our region’s people–will once again provide safe, nutritious food rather than potential health hazards.

There’s no doubt that health insurance reform is desperately needed, but to succeed in controlling costs and making us healthier it must accompanied by reforms to our food and environmental policies.

Popularity: 20% [?]

At the just-concluded meeting of the New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers in Saint John, the capital of the province of New Brunswick in Canada, the governors of the New England states adopted a “Blueprint” for electric transmission to facilitate development of wind power.  The idea was to sketch out a basic plan for supportive infrastructure needed if the region is going to meet its renewable energy and climate goals.

The plan, which is available at the website of an interstate organization known as the “New England States Committee on Electricity” (“NESCOE“) is not perfect.  It does not appropriately consider the impact of rising CO2 prices on the price of electricity and underestimates the reductions in electric demand as we become more efficient.  But it is a good start to the very serious discussion about renewable energy and transmission that is needed in order to confront and win our climate challenge and meet the targets that science tells us we need to hit.

The governors are, among other things, trying to strike a balance here between meeting our goals through imports of renewable power from outside the region and through homegrown renewable energy projects.  In the long run it is very clear that we need to do both in order to meet our stated goals and reduce our emissions in the manner that science tells us is needed – but getting that balance right is tricky, as can be seen in this NY Times blog entry which describes the very blunt take of Arnold Schwarzenegger on the subject . .

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tar sands activists unveil massive banner in Alberta, Canada

Pop quiz: Which country is the biggest exporter of oil to the United States?

Venezuela? Mexico? Saudi Arabia? None of the above. The correct answer is America’s neighbor to the north, Canada.

In a story that will almost certainly not make headlines in mainstream American news outlets, a group of activists blocked tar sands mining operations in Northern Alberta. The activists unveiled a massive banner and chained themselves to equipment.

Most of Canada’s oil comes from the tar sands – a bitumen rich deposit of sand, clay and water the size of England. It is the single the largest industrial project in the world.

Creating usable petroleum from the tar sands isn’t easy – or environmentally friendly – and has only been feasible in light of higher oil prices and newer technologies.

According to Greenpeace:

Tar sands Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, already nearing those of Norway, could soon more than triple to 140 million tonnes a year, as outlined in a Greenpeace report by award winning author Andrew Nikiforuk released this week. At that point they would equal or exceed those of Belgium, a county of 10 million. These numbers account only for the production of tar sands oil, and do not account for the massive additional GHG impact of burning the fuel.

Tar sands mining has other detrimental impacts on the environment, including toxic runoff and deforestation. CLF’s work on the Low Carbon Fuel Standard is intended to, among other things, reduce use of bitumen mining.

The activists hope to put the tar sands in the spotlight as President Obama and Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, meet in Washington, DC today.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Georges Bank is the underwater icon of New England – a place of legendary bounty for those fishermen willing to brave dangerous storms in search of Atlantic cod. But, the Bank has always been more than a popular and productive fishing ground. In New England, it’s comparable to the Grand Canyon for its popular resonance and cultural significance. Georges Bank is part of our cultural heritage that ties us to New England.

Between 1976 and 1982, three oil companies drilled ten oil and natural gas wells on Georges Bank. They were stopped from additional drilling by Conservation Law Foundation, working fishermen and citizens from around the region. In 1998, President Clinton issued an Executive Order that prevented the leasing of any area in the North Atlantic and, as a result, all of the 1979 Georges Bank leases have been relinquished or have expired. However, in 2008 President Bush removed the moratorium on oil and natural gas drilling and the day before he left office. Georges Bank and the rest of New England’s ocean are again at risk of drilling.

The Minerals Management Service (MMS) estimates that the entire Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf, which includes Georges Bank, has 3.82 billion barrels of oil. This represents a meager 3.31% of all known and predicted US OCS reserves. According to the US Energy Information Administration statistics, US consumers would use up this oil supply in less than 185 days and the natural gas available would consumed in about 585 days.

We don’t need to gamble with New England’s oceans, wildlife and coastal communities by drilling for oil in the North Atlantic. The Mineral Management Service is taking comments until September 21st on a pro-drilling plan that was designed by the Bush administration to drill in New England’s ocean. Please click here to send a pre-written letter urging the MMS to protect our oceans and wildlife and to promote clean, renewable energy. After you take action, please share this post with family and friends. We need everyone to participate!

The health and security of our oceans, wildlife, coasts and communities depend upon an energy plan that protects and conserves our ocean wildlife and their important habitat areas.

Click here to act now.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Is the ship of state ready to set the right course?

New England’s ocean and coastal waters have long suffered from management that only allows a single-sector approach. One agency is in charge of energy, one agency in charge of commercial fishing and another is in charge of water quality. This leads to a situation in both state and fedaral waters where no one is watching out for the overall health of the ocean ecosystem. Both the Pew Oceans Commission and the US Ocean Commission, hundreds of scientists and regional leaders from several coastal states have called for protection of ocean and coastal habitat and an ecosystem-based approach to management.

In Massachusetts we have the Massachusetts Ocean Plan, the first-ever-in-the-nation attempt at comprehensive ocean planning. There is a draft plan out now and a final due to be implemented by the end of 2009. The Commonwealth is having several public hearings over the course of September and all the info is right here.

On the federal level we have pretty well fallen behind due to a past administration that largely saw ocean management as another way to favor their friends in the oil business. Except for some truly exceptional Marine National Monuments - for which President Bush deserves sincere credit - the past administration left the recommendations of the Pew and US Ocean Commission on the shelf while they rammed through oil and gas drilling, held up or removed protections for marine mammals and seriously dragged their heels on clean, renewable energy.

That’s all set to change. On June 12 President Obama created a federal interagency task force with the charge to propose a singular national ocean policy and a framework for “marine spatial planning.” Just a mention sends a thrill down the spine doesn’t it? Well, if you are an ocean user or care about ocean wildlife it should. The problem is that our oceans, coasts and Great Lakes are managed through a jumble of 20 different agencies and about 140 not-always-coordinated laws. This management scheme creates confusion and discord among well-meaning agencies that want to cooperate with one another and fosters absolute mayhem among those agencies already inclined towards turf battles and internal politics. Even inside a single agency there may be conflicting directives that cause a stalemate between resource conservation and resource extraction. (Take a look at our own Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary where an abundance of fishing and fishing gear has altered undersea habitat, reduced overall fish and wildlife populations and still threatens the North Atlantic right whale, one of the rarest animals on the planet, but the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries still sits on its hands.)

So, the President wants an ocean policy and he will get a proposal from his task force on Sept. 10. After the 10th, the task force tackles the issue of marine spatial planning, which is really a term that means “planning various uses of a particular area.” (We’ve been doing it on land in New England for a few hundred years.) There is something else that happens after the 10th — the President’s Ocean Task Force comes to New England. They are planning a series of regional “listening sessions” for each area of the country and the east coast gets to represent on Sept. 24th in Providence at the Rhode Island Convention Center. CLF and our partners are working to highlight the necessary components of a national ocean policy, starting with a mandate to protect, maintain and restore our ocean, coastal and Great Lakes ecosystems. Without a strong environmental sustainability tenet a national ocean policy won’t be worth using. We’ll be fortunate to have the draft policy to respond to by then. The Council on Environmental Quality is heading up the ocean task force and you can read the presidential memo that started it all here. Keep a sharp eye on the CLF marine program page for alerts and news.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The Boston Globe today presents an excellent editorial on the misguided proposal for the power plant in Somerset Massachusetts:

ONE OF THE state’s “Filthy Five’’ coal-burning power plants is trying to turn itself into a Cinderella of clean-burning electricity generation. Since the makeover includes a first-in-the-nation commercial use of a certain technology to reduce dirty emissions, the state should give it a closer environmental review. (MORE)

This particular proposal is one that CLF is engaging in many ways, including in a pending court case (somerset-sc-clfs-memo-suppt-of-jdgmt-8-10-09).  And earlier on in the legal process this plant was (among other issues) discussed in an Op-Ed by Dr. James Hansen.  It has been the subject of ongoing upset, protests and opposition.

If you want to support our work on cases like this – go for it – or just comment below if you have a local coal fired power plant giving you gas.

Popularity: 2% [?]

I always say that mantra number two for a climate advocate is “Yeah, we have to do that too.”  As in, “We need to be more efficient AND we need to build wind farms AND we need to build transmission lines to support the wind farms AND we need to build sidewalks and transit so people can drive less, etc . . . “  You get the point.

And mantra number one is: “The scary part is . . .” because every time you think you have seen it all, something worse and new comes along.

The latest comes to us from the National Center for Atmospheric Research:

Arctic temperatures in the 1990s reached their warmest level of any decade in at least 2,000 years, new research indicates. The study, which incorporates geologic records and computer simulations, provides new evidence that the Arctic would be cooling if not for greenhouse gas emissions that are overpowering natural climate patterns.

Excellent discussion of this at Joe Romm’s Climate Progress blog.  And here is the NY Times article.

Will this motivate you to take action?

Popularity: 11% [?]

CLF staff writing on this blog, smart commentators and allied climate advocates have taken issue with Verizon Wireless appearing on the sponsor list for a Labor Day rally and concert that includes gathering of signatures for petitions against, and statements opposing, climate legislation.

A telephone conversation with Verizon Wireless Vice President Corporate Communications Jim Gerace led to him sending the following email giving his side of the story:

I appreciate you taking the time to reach out to me.  You can use any of this email for your site if you’d like.

As we discussed, our involvement in the Labor Day event was initiated by some local sales people to do what we pay them to do — sell wireless phones.  When they were presented with the opportunity to spend $1,000 to have access to 50,000 (the estimate at the time) members of the community they sell in, they jumped at the chance.  The underlying purpose of the event was not made obvious to them.  They saw it as a Labor Day concert.  Our involvement is not a statement of our policy on these issues.  Many media and interested people have chosen to not believe that, but they need only look at our record to see how serious we are about protecting the environment we live and work in.  We didn’t wake up one day last week and change our minds.  The following link will bring you to some of our key initiatives in this area: http://aboutus.vzw.com/Green_Initiative/overview.html .  The first one called Hopeline is a program I created way back in 1995 and continue to direct today.  Our commitment to the environment is unwavering, that some want to believe otherwise is disappointing.

What do folks think?  They are saying this is an innocent mistake by a company that is generally trying to do the right thing. Do you buy it?  Comment below . . .

Personally, I am waiting to see Verizon and/or Verizon Wireless step forward and take affirmative steps to show leadership as some of the true leaders in all sectors of American business have already done. Perhaps they will.

Popularity: 1% [?]