Thursday, 03 Jun 2004

The Day After Tomorrow Never Dies

Film Plot Rings True as NOAA Runs up Against White House

In Roland Emmerich's climate-change blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow -- perhaps you've heard about it? -- a crusading scientist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tries to get the word out about the dangers of sudden climate change, butting heads with a recalcitrant vice president (who looks suspiciously like a certain Dick we know). Much of the science in the movie is preposterous, but it turns out that the notion of the White House shushing NOAA scientists is right on the money. Find out how life imitates, um, "art" in Muckraker -- today on the Grist Magazine website.

Punch-drunk Lovelock

Famed Ecologist Argues Nuclear Power Needed to Fight Global Warming

A prominent ecologist is raising a ruckus in environmental circles by arguing that the world needs to immediately embrace nuclear energy if it's to have any chance of combating climate change. James Lovelock, the U.K. scientist whose Gaia Hypothesis -- that the earth itself is a self-regulating organism -- made him famous (well, in some circles), argued in a recent op-ed in The Independent that humanity needs to stop burning fossil fuels straight away and "there is no chance that the renewables, wind, tide, and water power can provide enough energy and in time," so nuclear is our only option for the next few decades. He entreated environmentalists "to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy." Many enviros were not convinced. As Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth U.K. put it, "Climate change and radioactive waste both pose deadly long-term threats, and we have a moral duty to minimize the effect of both, not to choose between them."

10 Things I Haiti About You

Deforestation in Haiti Increases Flood Danger

More than 90 percent of the country of Haiti is deforested. If you think that's depressing, consider that the lack of trees to hold soil in place has left Haiti's rural residents vulnerable to periodic floods in which torrential rainwater tumbles down mountains, picking up gravel and boulders that slam into villages. A flood last week killed 1,700 people around the village of Mapou. And yes, it gets worse: The root of the problem is poverty. Virtually no one in the country outside a few urban centers has access to electricity, so they burn tree-derived charcoal to cook. Government ministers met yesterday to consider solutions ranging from importing propane or wood to increasing enforcement of the logging bans regularly flouted by desperate residents. The U.S. and France are both offering some food and reforestation aid, but it's unlikely to dent the problems of a country that has descended almost completely into poverty. Gloom and doom, yes. Humor, not so much this time.

Mighty Morphin' Coal-power Rangers

NAFTA Commission Critical of Coal-Fired Power Plants

Overall pollution in North America declined by 10 percent from 1998 to 2001 (the last year for which figures are available), but coal-fired power plants continue to lag behind other sources in the pace of improvement and in reducing the total amount of pollution, according to a new report. The Commission for Environmental Cooperation, a panel established by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico under NAFTA, listed 46 coal-fired power plants among the top 50 polluters in North America. Release of chemical pollutants by industrial sources overall fell by 18 percent, while production from power plants fell by only 9 percent. "The [power plant] sector generated 45 percent of the 755,502 tons of toxic air releases in 2001, with hydrochloric and sulfuric acids being the chemicals most commonly released from the burning of coal and oil," said a statement released with the report, which also tagged power plants with "64 percent of all mercury air emissions, mainly from coal combustion."

Coal Hand Luke

EPA Proposal Altered to Favor Coal-Fired Power Plants

On the heels of today's report that 46 of the top 50 polluters in North America are coal-fired power plants comes this tidbit: A U.S. EPA proposal to curb interstate air pollution was altered by the White House at the last minute in a way that heavily favors, uh, coal-fired power plants. The proposal would establish a pollution credit-trading system for soot and ozone emissions, to be run by the states, similar to the sulfur-dioxide trading system currently in place to reduce acid rain. A section was deleted from the final draft last month by the White House Office of Management and Budget; the seemingly arcane change -- switching from the energy output-based system favored by enviros and gas and nuclear-power utilities to an energy input-based system that favors coal-fired utilities -- could mean "tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars to large utilities," says Michael Bradley of the Clean Energy Group, which represents some dozen utilities. Coincidentally, most of the coal-fired power plants that will benefit from the change are located in swing states important in the upcoming presidential election.