About Tara Holmes

Tara lives in San Francisco (but hails from Massachusetts). She is passionate about environmental conservation and increasing public awareness of environmental issues. Tara received a BA from Connecticut College and an MPA with a concentration in environmental policy from The Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She tends to focus on politics and business, but also touches on behavior. Tara has worked at the World Resources Institute, the MA Department of Energy Resources and spent summer 2010 working on UN-REDD research and policy in Paris, France for ONF International. She is currently involved with SF Environment, Friends of the Urban Forest and sits on the Board of Directors for Randall Museum Friends in San Francisco. She enjoys being outdoors as much as possible! Twitter: @tmhol. Personal Blog: http://taraholmes.wordpress.com/ In addition to the posts listed by clicking her username above, she also contributed to the post Whitehouse goes solar!

$18.5 Million for New England Energy Projects

[Men working on telephone lines, probably near a TVA dam hydroelectric plant] (LOC) by The Library of Congress On Monday, the DOE announced a $18.5 million grant will be dispersed via the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) amongst various energy research labs and companies throughout New England.  The funds are part of the larger $349 million Recovery Act funding pool and will be used primarily for energy efficiency projects; specifically in this case, solid state lighting using gallium nitride, air conditioning efficiency, chemical flow batteries, and overall energy storage capacity research.

MIT will receive $4.4 million, United Technologies Research Center will receive a total of $8.8 million, Beacon Power Corp will receive $2.2 million, Proton Energy will receive $2.1 million and General Compression will receive $750,000. Massachusetts continues to be a leader in the domestic clean-energy technology revolution and these funds will help push forward numerous projects centered around transformational energy research. For 2011, $299,000,000 is sought so critical energy research can continue to be funded.

Global Warming Solutions Act

Boston Harbor - Seen from the Top of Mystic River Bridge. In Foreground, Massachusetts Port Authority Shipping Facility Has New Equipment That Permits Direct Loading from Ship to Freight Train 02/1973 by The U.S. National Archives If you’ve been itching to voice your opinion on state global warming legislation, now’s your chance! Public hearings are being held across the state next month to discuss the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Target and Draft Committee Implementation Plan for 2020.

A little background:

In August 2008, Governor Patrick signed into law the Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA), an Act that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions economy-wide by 2050, with a 2020 target set between 10 and 25 percent below 1990 levels.  Massachusetts has already promulgated greenhouse gas reporting regulations under the Act; 2009 emissions will be the first year reported. The Act requires that by January 1, 2011 the Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EOEEA), develops an implementation plan for achieving the reductions required to meet the 2020 target.

The Commonwealth’s technical consultant completed an analysis demonstrating that state and federal policies now in place, or anticipated, have Massachusetts on track toward emissions reductions of 18 percent by 2020. On Earth Day, April 22, 2009, the Secretary announced that hearings would be held around the state to take public comment on a 2020 reduction target between 18 percent and 25 percent. The Secretary also recently released a draft report on this topic: Cost Effective Greenhouse Gas Mitigation in Massachusetts: An Analysis of 2020 Potential.

If you have expertise in the area, or just want to show support for clean energy legislation in the state of Massachusetts, please take note of the hearing dates and locations!

P.S. See also June 3rd‘s Panel on Federal Climate Legislation.

Gulf Oil Disaster

Oil Slick on the San Juan River Just Above Log Boom. A Burst Pipeline at Shiprock, New Mexico, Spilled About 285,000 Gallons of Crude Oil. The Oil Flowed Downstream More Than 200 Miles before the Booms Contained It. EPA Supervised Clean - Up of the San Ju by The U.S. National Archives By now, news of the catastrophic BP off-shore oil rig explosion in the Gulf, and now massive resulting oil leak, has circulated national and international press. Referred to as one of the worst environmental disasters on record, with an oil spill predicted to be double that of the Exxon Valdez in 1989: at a rate of 25,000 barrels a day, a total of 2.2 million gallons of oil spilled, if the well isn’t tapped; a process experts say can take up to three months. Ironically, this event couldn’t have occurred at a more inopportune time for the President, who just a month ago announced a halt on the longstanding off-shore drilling moratorium along the US Eastern seaboard in order to expand off-shore oil and natural gas exploration. Sadly, this type of horrific environmental disaster has happened time and time again, and will continue to happen as long as we continue to rely on fossil fuels for the majority of our energy supply. The more important question to ask is: when is enough enough?

Paul Krugman correlates the recent BP disaster to the start of the environmental movement in the 1970s, when pollution was physically visible much more so than it is today. While existing EPA regulations, a result of the 1970s environmental movement, helped to cap much of the visible pollution of that time, today Americans are, ironically, less aware of environmental damage because we rarely see it. Climate change is a perfect example. Clearly there are visible products of climate change: weather shifts, species eradication and impacts on habitat, but in reality, how often do we actually stop and see these impacts? The implications are so long-term it’s often hard to comprehend.

As for BP, the oil spill happened and we cannot undo the subsequent damage. We can, however, learn from this event and wake up this time around. We have the chance to shift to a clean energy future; we have the technology, the brain power and the interested institutes and Universities. We now need strong, unfaltering leadership. No longer can we rely on such dirty and dangerous methods of energy production – the damage surely out weights any benefit.

Green GDP

Son of Jim Norris, homesteader, tying corn into bundles, Pie Town, New Mexico (LOC) by The Library of Congress In a recent Earth Magazine article, and just in time for the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day, an interesting argument was made regarding so-called “Green GDP.” Garrett Groves and Michael Webber point out that in the United States, as well as in many developed nations, current economic measurements of GDP are intended to assess national income and wealth exchange using a pre-World War II model created by Simon Kuznets, a Nobel prize winning economist. Within this model, there is little room for the quantifiable benefits of preservation or conservation of natural resources, or for decreasing carbon emissions. This model also fails to account for waste and pollution. Instead, our economic system measures “success” purely through monetary growth, development and exploitation of the Earth’s natural resources.

Clearly, given climate change and our ever-increasing global demand for energy and natural resources, there is a serious and urgent need to re-evaluate economic definitions of prosperity and gain. To do this, a new indicator would need to be developed, one that reflected both economic prosperity and ecological health. Many international conferences have addressed this exact question, starting with the Rio 1992 Earth Summit. This discussion continues through talks in Kyoto, Johannesburg, Montreal, Copenhagen and soon, Cancun.

Unfortunately, there has been much political debate and little focused action with regard to a unified economic environmental measurement.  Some economics argue that to do so would require privatizing the “commons”—or shared public goods such as atmosphere, ocean, and fresh water. A similar argument was famously discussed by Garrett Hardin in 1968.  Others argue that the developing carbon “market” will be pivotal in defining further environmental economic measurements of its kind. One thing is certain: environmental economics must play a key role in public policy if we want to sustain a healthy planet for generations to come.

Rain, rain…and more rain.

MCCALL MAGAZINE COVER, GIRL IN RAIN by George Eastman House The greater Boston metropolitan area is expected to receive another 3 inches of rain from the current storm system. This is on top of the 8-10 inches of rain that fell a little over one week ago which caused extensive flooding in cities like Waltham and Quincy. The Boston Globe reported today that during the last deluge, the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority released 15 million gallons of raw sewage into Boston Harbor due to system overload. The Agency reported it hopes to not have to resort to similar action this time around, but is leery if the rain continues into the morning. On average, Boston receives about 4 inches of precipitation in the month of March (daily records); which was satisfied by last week’s storm. While one cannot unequivocally link climate change to any exceptional weather patterns, one cannot rule out the possibility either; climate change is said to increase storm intensity, particularly around coastal regions.

Cleaning up New York’s Gowanus Canal

gowanus canal by joe holmes According to the NYTimes, the EPA announced that it will designate the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, one of the most contaminated waterways in the nation, a Superfund site. This designation paves the way for a federally-funded clean up process of decades of pollution; the 1.8 mile canal was shown to have pesticide pollution as well as PCB cancer-causing pollution.  The EPA estimated that the cleanup would last 10 to 12 years and cost $300 million to $500 million. Interestingly, the Bloomberg Administration was not pleased with this news. The Administration argued that the designation could spark legal battles with polluters, defer completion of cleanup and dissuade construction by developers deterred by the stigma of a Superfund label.

Gowanus Canal at Lowtide by JGNY The city instead envisioned a residential and commercial development project along the canal and supported voluntary cleanup measures by polluters. To establish these new residential areas, the city planned to hire the Army Corps of Engineers in a separate federal funding bid, but by doing so would not secure funding as well as with a Superfund designation. Critics also claimed the plan would complicate cleanup given the involvement of both the Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA. For those of you in the NYC area who are interested to learn more, the EPA plans to discuss next steps regarding the canal at a public meeting with neighborhood residents and other stakeholders on Thursday night at Public School 58 on Smith Street in Brooklyn.

The Cost of Business

General view of the city and the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, Amarillo, Texas. Santa Fe R.R. trip (LOC) by The Library of Congress

According to a recent United Nations report, that’s being complied by Trucost, the world’s top 3,000 companies cause $2.2 trillion in environmental damage per year1. The report is said to include all 500 companies on Standard & Poor’s list of the largest publicly traded companies in the United States. Richard Mattison, the chief operating officer of Trucost, commented that the report not only examined company impacts but also goods and services, greenhouse gas emissions, local pollutions, particulate emissions, and use of natural resources like water and timber.  While the aim of the report is to bring light to environmental business ethics, it’s also telling how complicated such reporting can become: many US companies do business and manufacture products globally making regulation, evaluation and monitoring a challenge. Nonetheless, Mr. Mattison notes that the intent of the report is to capture the attention of investors and educate those who want to affect positive environmental change through business decisions. He goes on to say that, one that of the things investors can do is engage with companies in a collaborative way. Seeing as we live in a global society heavily influenced by the corporate model, there may be no other immediate solution to meeting the demands of consumers and the demands of our planet.

1. By comparison, the gross world product is on the order of $50 trillion, and in 1997 ecosystem services were valued at $33 trillion; $44,000,000,000,000 in 2009 dollars.

Déjà vu?

factory

It appears the Obama Administration is starting to eerily resemble the Bush Administration, at least when it comes to energy policy. In last week’s State of the Union address, President Obama touched on—albeit briefly—clean energy standards and climate change. Sadly, those “standards” reflected the days of recent past: investing in “clean coal” technology, nuclear power and biofuels. As for significant wind and solar power investment? Hmmm…

To make matters more dire, the Obama EPA has signed off on the Renewable Fuel Standard established under the Bush administration. The Renewable Fuel Standard supports energy-intensive corn production for ethanol, which is high in GHG as well as inefficient to produce. The EPA is also apparently in support of Carbon Capture and Storage technology which is said to reduce the amount of CO2 leaked into the atmosphere from coal-fired power plants. What about the damaging coal extraction process that leaves mountaintops bare, rivers polluted and coal ash? And nuclear energy? Never mind the issue of waste, the sheer number of new nuclear power plants that would have to be constructed to account for our ever-growing demand for energy is daunting in itself.

So where does this leave us? Hopefully Obama will understand that investing in truly clean sources of renewable energy, like wind and solar, is not only good for the environment, but good for our struggling economy.  Instead of investing in “clean coal” technology, let’s instead subsidize clean energy center training and education programs so coal miners can gain marketable skills in a safer, cleaner industry. Instead of a short term approach, let’s mix that with a long term agenda so we can, in time, ween off of the fossil fuel based economy we’ve grown so accustomed to and onto a green, renewable one. If the U.S. wants to “lead” in the global clean energy race, at this point, there really is no time left to waste.

Clearing the Air

From a record-breaking freeze threating an entire crop of citrus in Florida to significant snowfall in England, many are wondering just how “real” global warming actually is…considering how cold it’s been lately. To set the record straight, let’s begin by using the term “climate change” instead of “global warming.” While indeed the Earth’s core temperature is rising at an alarming rate, what that temperature rise actually does is shift the various ecosystem temperatures on Earth either up or down; it doesn’t necessarily mean temperatures will be high everywhere, but that the climate will, in fact, change drastically in one way or another. Some previous Ice Ages, for example, were triggered by changes in ocean currents and surface water temperature due to cold, fresh water from the melting polar ice caps disrupting major ocean currents. NASA highlights this important weather / climate distinction on their website. Please pass this information along to any skeptics who might need additional information. If we’re going to reverse climate change on a global scale, one of the first critical steps is education.