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Contest: Replace the ‘Saudi Arabia’ Trope!

On Monday, as I was listening to a news call with Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, and Ken Salazar, the Interior secretary, Mr. Reid spoke some proud words:

Nevada, he said, is the “Saudi Arabia of solar energy.”

But is it? Indeed, with all due respect to Mr. Reid, claims for “the Saudi Arabia of solar energy” have already been made on behalf of Australia and Africa.

Forbes recently suggested that Saudi Arabia was the Saudi Arabia of solar power….

But given that the planet’s oil supplies, including those in Saudi Arabia, are finite by their very nature, it might well be time to find a new metaphor — particularly when referring to renewable energy sources.

After all, Matthew Simmons, the author of “Twilight in the Desert” (2005), has argued that Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves are peaking, and could decrease far faster than Saudi officials say.

The environmental toll of plastics

From cell phones and computers to bicycle helmets and hospital IV bags, plastic has molded society in many ways that make life both easier and safer. But the synthetic material also has left harmful imprints on the environment and perhaps human health, according to a new compilation of articles authored by scientists from around the world.

More than 60 scientists contributed to the new report, which aims to present the first comprehensive review of the impact of plastics on the environment and human health, and offer possible solutions.

“One of the most ubiquitous and long-lasting recent changes to the surface of our planet is the accumulation and fragmentation of plastics,” wrote David Barnes, a lead author and researcher for the British Antarctic Survey. The report was published this month in a theme issue of Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B, a scientific journal….

“Plastics are very long-lived products that could potentially have service over decades, and yet our main use of these lightweight, inexpensive materials are as single-use items that will go to the garbage dump within a year, where they’ll persist for centuries,” Richard Thompson, lead editor of the report, said in an interview.

Evidence is mounting that the chemical building blocks that make plastics so versatile are the same components that might harm people and the environment. And its production and disposal contribute to an array of environmental problems, too. For example:

• Chemicals added to plastics are absorbed by human bodies. Some of these compounds have been found to alter hormones or have other potential human health effects.
• Plastic debris, laced with chemicals and often ingested by marine animals, can injure or poison wildlife.
• Floating plastic waste, which can survive for thousands of years in water, serves as mini transportation devices for invasive species, disrupting habitats.
• Plastic buried deep in landfills can leach harmful chemicals that spread into groundwater.
• Around 4 percent of world oil production is used as a feedstock to make plastics, and a similar amount is consumed as energy in the process.

People are exposed to chemicals from plastic multiple times per day through the air, dust, water, food and use of consumer products.

For example, phthalates are used as plasticizers in the manufacture of vinyl flooring and wall coverings, food packaging and medical devices. Eight out of every ten babies, and nearly all adults, have measurable levels of phthalates in their bodies.

In addition, bisphenol A (BPA), found in polycarbonate bottles and the linings of food and beverage cans, can leach into food and drinks. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 93 percent of people had detectable levels of BPA in their urine.

The report noted that the high exposure of premature infants in neonatal intensive care units to both BPA and phthalates is of “great concern”….

“We have animal literature, which shows direct links between exposure and adverse health outcomes, the limited human studies, and the fact that 90 to 100 percent of the population has measurable levels of these compounds in their bodies,” said John Meeker, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and a lead author. “You take the whole picture and it does raise concerns, but more research is needed.”

Shanna Swan, director of the University of Rochester’s Center for Reproductive Epidemiology, conducted studies that found an association between pregnant women’s exposure to phthalates and altered genital development in their baby boys.

Also, people with the highest exposure to BPA have an increased rate of heart disease and diabetes, according to one recent study. Animal tests studies of PBDEs have revealed the potential for damaging the developing brain and the reproductive system.

First Biodiesel Pipeline Starts Operations

A commercial shipment of biodiesel has moved through a pipeline in the United States for the first time, according to Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, a pipeline company.

A 5 percent biodiesel blend moved from Mississippi to Georgia, and also from Mississippi to Virginia, via the Plantation Pipe Line Company, which is owned jointly by Kinder Morgan with a 51 percent stake, and Exxon Mobil with 49 percent. Last December, Kinder Morgan announced that the nation’s first ethanol pipeline had begun service.

An insurance plan for climate change victims

As western governments dither at the negotiating table over how to help the world’s poorest people cope with climate change, some unlikely saviours have stepped up to the plate: the giants of the global insurance industry.

As well as providing protection from the increasingly unpredictable weather, the premiums could also be a powerful way to get poor people to adapt to climate change by encouraging them to invest in measures like drought-resistant crops. Is this profit-driven endeavour too good to be true?

U.S. joins International Renewable Energy Agency

The United States joined 136 other countries this week as members of the new International Renewable Energy Agency.

Committing to IRENA’s goals of promoting a rapid transition toward the widespread and sustainable use of renewable energy on a global scale is another step in the State Department’s commitment “to make climate change and clean energy priorities of our foreign policy agency,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement.

“IRENA will help ensure that global resources are put to maximum effect, especially in response to the needs of the developing world,” Clinton said.

US cuts Indonesian debt for forest protection

Indonesia committed to the conservation of its dwindling tropical forests in a multimillion dollar debt-swap deal signed Tuesday with the American government, the U.S. Embassy said.

Jakarta’s payments to Washington will be reduced by $30 million over the next eight years under the U.S. Tropical Forest Conservation Act, the embassy said in a statement.

The Indonesian government will donate the money it saves to the charities Conservation International and the Indonesian Biodiversity Foundation, which will deposit the money into a local forest conservation fund.

Detroit Electric Discusses Asian Ambitions

Last week, the Chinese automaker Dongfeng Motor Corporation and Detroit Electric Holdings — keeper of the Detroit Electric brand, a decades-old, long-defunct electric vehicle label that was recently ressurected as a Netherlands-based, largely Asian-financed maker of electric drive train technology — announced plans to jointly research, develop, market and sell fully electric vehicles in China.

The partnership follows on the heels of Detroit Electric’s $331 million assembly agreement with Proton Holdings, a Malaysia-based automotive manufacturing company, signed at the end of March. It will allow Detroit Electric to expand its international sales, and the company says it aims to sell 45,000 vehicles across Europe, the United States and Asia by next year. It says it will increase that to 270,000 by 2012.

Plants Save The Earth From An Icy Doom

When glaciers advanced over much of the Earth’s surface during the last ice age, what kept the planet from freezing over entirely? This has been a puzzle to climate scientists because leading models have indicated that over the past 24 million years geological conditions should have caused carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere to plummet, possibly leading to runaway “icehouse” conditions.

Now researchers writing in the July 2, 2009, Nature report on the missing piece of the puzzle – plants.

“Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations have been remarkably stable over the last 20 or 25 million years despite other changes in the environment,” says co-author Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology. “We can look to land plants as the primary buffering agent that’s held CO₂ in such a narrow range during this time.”

Plants’ Internal Clock Can Improve Climate Change Models

The ability of plants to tell the time, a mechanism common to all living beings, enables them to survive, grow and reproduce. An international team has studied this circadian clock from a molecular viewpoint and has found an ecological implication: it makes climate change scenarios and CO₂ level figures more accurate.

Group: World failing to halt biodiversity decline

Governments are failing to stem a rapid decline in biodiversity that is now threatening extinction for almost half the world’s coral reef species, a third of amphibians and a quarter of mammals, a leading environmental group warned Thursday.

“Life on Earth is under serious threat,” the International Union for Conservation of Nature said in a 155-page report that describes the past five years of a losing battle to protect species, natural habitats and geographical regions from the devastating effects of man.

Drax protesters ‘not criminals’

Environmental protesters who ambushed a coal train as it approached a power station have told a jury they believe they are not criminals.

Twenty-two people on trial at Leeds Crown Court deny obstructing a train carrying coal to Drax in Selby, North Yorkshire, in June 2008.

Louise Hemmerman, 31, of Hartley Avenue, Leeds, said she felt her home city was under threat from pollution.

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This entry was posted by Austin on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 10:49 am and is filed under Climate Progress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.