Methane is one of the worst greenhouse gases contributing
to global warming. (Photo by Bill Tarpenning, courtesy of the USDA)
Lots of people who live near big livestock farms complain
about the stench of manure. One of the by-products of all
that manure is methane gas – which can be used to create
electricity. More states are starting to offer tax breaks to
factory farms to make energy from their waste.
Julie Grant reports:
Transcript
Lots of people who live near big livestock farms complain
about the stench of manure. One of the by-products of all
that manure is methane gas – which can be used to create
electricity. More states are starting to offer tax breaks to
factory farms to make energy from their waste.
Julie Grant reports:
Several states around the nation are offering tax breaks to
encourage factory farms to capture the methane from their
cow manure – and to convert it into usable electricity.
Methane is one of the worst greenhouse gases contributing
to global warming.
You might think environmental groups would support the
idea. But Ed Hopkins of the Sierra Club says taxpayers
should not subsidize manure-to-energy projects.
“We see factory farms as a business. And like any business,
they should pay the costs for their pollution control
equipment – not the public.”
Hopkins says taxpayer money for manure to energy projects
will only encourage more factory farming and the other
pollution problems associated with those big operations.
The Exelon nuclear power plant in Braidwood, Illinois (Photo by Lester Graham)
US corporations are struggling
with a new issue: reducing their carbon
footprint. They’re anticipating federal
requirements to reduce carbon outputs to
limit climate change. They’re moving now
so they won’t be at a competitive disadvantage.
One industry would seem to have an edge:
nuclear power. Nuclear doesn’t emit greenhouse
gases such as carbon dioxide. But Shawn Allee reports the nation’s biggest nuclear
power company might not be able to take advantage
of this obvious option:
Transcript
US corporations are struggling
with a new issue: reducing their carbon
footprint. They’re anticipating federal
requirements to reduce carbon outputs to
limit climate change. They’re moving now
so they won’t be at a competitive disadvantage.
One industry would seem to have an edge:
nuclear power. Nuclear doesn’t emit greenhouse
gases such as carbon dioxide. But Shawn Allee reports the nation’s biggest nuclear
power company might not be able to take advantage
of this obvious option:
Recently I dropped in on a corporate meet-and-greet in Chicago.
I waded through through computerized presentations, and loads of free pastry and coffee,
and heard executives from Pepsi, IBM, and Staples talk about cutting their carbon
emissions.
The company most eager to talk was Exelon.
“We’re a very large power generator, we are also a very large utility company and
given our size, we have a special responsibility to help address the implications of
climate change.”
Ruth Ann Gillis is an executive Vice President at Exelon.
The company’s prepping for the day when the government makes them pay when they
put carbon into the atmosphere.
Gillis says Exelon is starting early, and plans to cut carbon emissions by fifteen million
tons a year by 2020.
“The reduction, the offset, the displacement of fifteen million tons is the equivalent
of taking three million cars a year off our roads and highways. And for nothing
more, everyone should be hopeful we are indeed successful, because it will make a
difference.”
To make that difference, Exelon will promote efficiency, cut the coal used in some of its
power stations, and slash its own energy use in buildings and vehicles.
I head to one of Exelon’s power plants to learn another way Exelon might cut its carbon
output.
Plant Manager Brian Hanson says the idea is to squeeze more power out of existing
nuclear power stations.
Brian Hanson: “One of our strategies of our 2020 Carbon iniative is to increase
power in some of our reactors, to take advantage of some of the flexibility built into
the power plants.”
Shawn Allee: “When you say flexibility what do you mean by that?”
Hanson: “They were built with extra pumps and systems that would let us operate
at higher power.”
Allee: “Do you need somebody’s permission to do that?”
Hanson: “As part of our license to operate the facility we’re only allowed to operate
at a certain power level, but to go above that we have to submit a formal
engineering study to the nuclear regulatory commission.”
But why upgrade? Why squeeze more power out of old plants? Why not build new
nuclear power plants, too?
Well, Exelon would like to. But it’s not easy.
Tom O’Neil is Vice President of New Plant Development at Exelon.
He says Exelon wants a new nuclear power plant in Texas.
But no one’s licensed a nuke plant for a dozen years and it’s common for projects to get
canceled.
So Exelon’s got some blanks to fill in.
“How much will it cost, can we finance it, what’s the political support, what do we
think the regulatory environment will look like. Those are all factors that generate
risk. Can we mitigate the risk and move forward with what would be a very
expensive construction project with some confidence that we can get it done, on time
and be profitable at the end.”
If the company pulls that off, it would make more electricity, but emit almost no new
carbon.
And its overall carbon footprint would shrink. Helping reduce emissions that cause
global warming.
But, even Exelon – the country’s biggest nuclear power company – might not be able to
turn to its core business to save the world.
Memos from Bush political appointees are telling government scientists there's no way to make a connection between specific greenhouse gas emissions and endangered wildlife, so don't going looking for one. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
Wildlife scientists in government
agencies have been ordered not to analyze
whether greenhouse gases affect endangered
animals. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Wildlife scientists in government
agencies have been ordered not to analyze
whether greenhouse gases affect endangered
animals. Lester Graham reports:
Memos from Bush political appointees are telling government scientists there’s no way
to make a connection between specific greenhouse gas emissions and endangered
wildlife, so don’t going looking for one.
In other words, that ice melting in the arctic causing polar bears so much difficulty?
Don’t try to use science to blame coal-burning power plants in the U.S.
Jeff Ruch is with Public Employees for Envrionemental Responsibility. He says this new
rule is the Bush administration’s way of making sure more coal-fired power plants can
be built.
“The Bush administration is doing everything they can to smooth a way to site an
additional 20 plants in the near term from their point of view, before they leave office.
And that’s an awful lot of greenhouse gases and that’s where the fight is.”
This ruling will likely be overturned in the courts, eventually – but probably not before the
coal-burning plants have been approved.
For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
One environmentalist is arguing that hormones in cows may actually be better for the environment (Photo by Kinna Ohman)
The cow hormone known as rBST or rBGH
has taken a beating in the environmental community.
Injecting the hormone into cows makes them produce
more milk. But some people are afraid the hormone
can find its way from the cow, to the cow’s milk,
and into our bodies. The government insists that’s
not the case. Shawn Allee says one researcher
wants to change the debate about rBST – and convince
environmentalists to support the hormone:
Transcript
The cow hormone known as rBST or rBGH
has taken a beating in the environmental community.
Injecting the hormone into cows makes them produce
more milk. But some people are afraid the hormone
can find its way from the cow, to the cow’s milk,
and into our bodies. The government insists that’s
not the case. Shawn Allee says one researcher
wants to change the debate about rBST – and convince
environmentalists to support the hormone:
Before I introduce you to the researcher who supports rbst or rbgh, I want
you to understand what she’s up against.
It’s well-meaning people like Steve Parkes.
Parkes co-owns New Leaf natural food store in Chicago. He decides what’s
on the shelves.
“A lot goes into making that decision. First and foremost, is it something
I would eat myself?”
And as for milk produced with rbgh, Parkes won’t sell it.
“People have been drinking milk for thousands of years from animals
that didn’t have have rgbh in them, so, I think I’m a little more
comfortable drinking milk from a cow that didn’t have rgbh than I am
from something that is a very, very new technology.”
A lot of people distrust rbgh, and that’s changed the milk market.
For example, some retailers like Starbucks won’t buy milk from dairies that
use it. More and more dairies are asking farmers to pledge not to use the
hormone.
The trend has frustrated researcher Judith Capper.
“People aren’t questioning the science basis of it.”
Capper is with Cornell University. She argues environmentalists and
consumers should take another look at the hormone, and see it as part of the
solution to global warming.
Capper recently co-wrote a study that began with a simple observation – in a
few decades, there will be many more Americans.
“The US population will have gone up from about 300 million people to
377 million people and we wanted to look at the environment impact of
producing enough milk to feed all those people.”
That scares Capper – because producing milk can make the global warming
problem worse.
That’s because feeding cows, and the cows themselves, lead to more
greenhouse gas emissions.
“Okay, there are six major inputs and outputs in terms of carbon.”
I won’t go through six, but here are a few.
First, there’s the feed that cows eat. Tractors have to plant grain. That burns
fossil fuels. Greenhouse gasses. Then feed is trucked to the dairy farm.
More greenhouse gasses. More cows, more greenhouse gasses.
So, you want as much milk as possible from each cow.
“If you give rbst to a cow, it will produce an extra ten pounds per day,
that’s quite an increase.”
And then there’s the other greenhouse gasses. From, um, the ugly end of the
cow equation.
The manure puts off other potent greenhouse gasses. And Cows belch
methane. Cows that use rbst poop and belch, spare the atmosphere even
more carbon.
All this leads Capper to a startling conclusion.
She says if farmers gave a million cows the hormone –
“Using rbst would be like taking about 400,000 cars off the road, or
planting three hundred million trees. Those are really big numbers.”
Judith Capper says she expects scientists will challenge her research – and
she welcomes a good debate about rbgh and rbst.
She says that’s better than this vague idea that the hormone might somehow
be bad without understanding the whole story.
“Choose organic, choose rbst-free, whatever, but base it on facts and
science, not on consumer perceptions that may not be factually correct.”
But, Capper’s got her work cut out for her.
Government statistics show consumer fear about rbgh has made farmers cut
the percentage of cows injected with the hormone.
than the kind of food you buy. Lester Graham reports on a
new study that looks at the connections between food and
greenhouse gasses:
Transcript
How far your food travels might be less important than the kind of food you buy. Lester Graham reports on a new study that looks at the connections between food and greenhouse gasses:
One of the reasons more people have been buying local food is because it doesn’t travel as far, use more energy and create as much greenhouse gas emissions.
But a study from Carnegie Mellon suggests the kind of food you buy is more important. The study indicates emissions from animals such as methane and nitrous oxides can be as much as twenty times more potent than carbon dioxide from transportation.
Christopher Weber is the lead author of the study.
“Because of smaller amounts of emissions, but more potent emissions of these gasses, it turns out that the CO2 associated with energy to move food around is not as important as these non-energy related greenhouse gasses.”
Weber acknowledges there are more good reasons to buy local food than just greenhouse gas emissions. But cutting down on meat in your diet might reduce greenhouses gasses more.
For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
President Bush giving the State of the Union address (Photo courtesy of the US Department of State)
President George Bush is proposing the next
step for the country to deal with greenhouse emissions
contributing to climate change. Lester Graham reports
the President’s proposal is not popular with everyone:
Transcript
President George Bush is proposing the next
step for the country to deal with greenhouse emissions
contributing to climate change. Lester Graham reports
the President’s proposal is not popular with everyone:
President Bush says he’s following his plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions that he first outlined in 2002.
“I put our nation on a path to slow, stop, and eventually reverse the growth of our
greenhouse gas emissions. In 2002 I announced our first step: to reduce America’s
greenhouse gas intensity by 18% through 2012.”
That’s not an 18% reduction in greenhouse gases, but rather a slowing in growth of the
gases. President Bush says it’s time to look at the next step.
“Today I’m announcing a new national goal: to stop the growth of U.S. greenhouse gas
emissions by 2025.”
The President says some of the steps to get to that point are already in place: a
phased in new mileage standard for vehicles; increased use of renewable fuels such as
cellulosic ethanol, wind, and solar; nuclear, and clean coal power generation; and more
efficient appliances.
Some environmentalists say this move is a non-starter. Eileen Claussen is the
President of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
“You could say ‘More of the same.’ Or, you could say that it’s worse because actually his
proposal is to let emissions grow for another 17 years.”
Claussen says greenhouse gas restrictions need to be put in place much sooner.
While the environmentalists think the President’s proposal is weak and offers few
specifics, conservatives think the President is reversing his course and headed for
economic trouble.
The conservative think tank, the Competitive Enterprise Institute says this move will
destroy President Bush’s legacy.
Marlo Lewis is a Senior Fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He says
capping CO2 won’t do enough to stop or even slow global warming and it will end up
being disastrous for the economy.
“It’s all cost for no benefit.”
Lewis expects a cap-and-trade program for greenhouse emissions will be put in place if
the President continues down this path. Lewis says if that happens, quote, “climate change alarmists” will never let it stop.
“Until basically you’re trying to run your economy on wind turbines and solar panels
which simply would not work.”
He says if the environmentalists want a future without fossil fuels and their accompanying
greenhouse gases, the country will need to dam up rivers for hydro-power and build a
bunch of new nuclear power plants.
With only nine months left in President Bush’s final term in office, the President’s
proposals might not mean that much. Eileen Claussen with the Pew Center on Global
Climate Change believes other politicians are well ahead of the President on the issue.
“The good news is that I’m not sure that his strategy here is really relevant. We have a
Congress that is working hard to come up with a bill that would cap emissions. We
have governors in 23 states who are working on cap-and-trade programs to limit their
emissions. We’ve got three presidential candidates – all three – who support capping
emissions.”
President Bush announced his plan to deal with greenhouse gases in preparation for
the G-8 summit of industrialized nations this summer. The President says, there, they plan to come up with
a plan that will call for rapidly developing nations such as China and India to make the
same kind of restrictions as the U.S. so that the United States is not at an economic
disadvantage.
Hallway family farm in NY. (Photo by Keith Weller, courtesy of the USDA)
A federal plan to exempt livestock farms from
reporting on air pollution has environmental groups upset.
Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
A federal plan to exempt livestock farms from
reporting on air pollution has environmental groups upset.
Chuck Quirmbach reports:
More farms are getting bigger. With the larger numbers of cows, chickens and
other animals, come sizable amounts of gasses such as ammonia and hydrogen
sulfide.
The EPA wants to change an emergency response law to exempt farms from
reporting large airborne emissions connected to animal waste.
Barry Breen is a Deputy Administrator with the EPA. He says the regular release
of animal gases is not the kind of thing that should trigger a rapid response from
his agency.
“Even if one of our folks showed up, we wouldn’t quite know what to do. It’s not any
different today than it was yesterday or last week or any other time.”
Breen says the EPA or states could take clean up action, if need be, under other
rules. But environmental groups say the current reporting requirement is very
helpful to neighbors and communities that want to know what’s in the air at
nearby farms.
Photograph of illuminated incandescent-replacement fluorescent bulb. (Source: Jdorwin at Wikimedia Commons)
On Saturday night from 8 to 9 the World Wildlife
Fund is asking you to turn off your lights for Earth Hour.
Lester Graham reports sitting in the dark is supposed to
make you think about how you contribute to global warming:
Transcript
On Saturday night from 8 to 9 the World Wildlife
Fund is asking you to turn off your lights for Earth Hour.
Lester Graham reports sitting in the dark is supposed to
make you think about how you contribute to global warming:
The World Wildlife Fund is organizing the Earth Hour. Some have questioned whether
what some might consider a “publicity stunt” will really make a difference. Joe Pouliot is
with the group.
“Well I wouldn’t characterize this as a stunt. Climate change, unfortunately, hasn’t been getting a huge amount of attention. But because of the activities of Earth Hour, people are really beginning to focus on the challenges of climate change.”
Earth Hour wants you to shut off your lights for an hour because lot of electricity comes
from coal-burning power plants. They put out a lot of carbon dioxide, a main
greenhouse gas. Pouliot says people, organizations and cities on six continents are
participating in Earth Hour, including the cities of Toronto, Altlanta, Chicago, Phoenix
and San Francisco.
For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
Airplane manufacturers such as Boeing are working on improving the fuel efficiency of planes. But it might take some airline companies a while to upgrade their fleets.
(Photo courtesy of The Boeing Company)
Getting somewhere by airplane used to be a luxury. Now many of us wouldn’t know life without it. As air travel gets more and more popular, there’s been more concern about the environmental impacts of our flying habits. Rebecca Williams takes a look at what’s happening in the skies:
Transcript
Getting somewhere by airplane used to be a luxury. Now many of us
wouldn’t know life without it. As air travel gets more and more
popular, there’s been more concern about the environmental impacts of
our flying habits. Rebecca Williams takes a look at what’s happening
in the skies:
Air travel still takes a backseat to car travel as a way to get around.
But it’s growing by about 5 percent a year. There are more low cost
carriers these days, and plane tickets are cheaper, in real dollars,
than they used to be.
Airplanes have gotten a lot more efficient, but they’re not off the
hook, either. They burn fossil fuels, so they emit carbon dioxide.
CO2 is almost universally agreed to be the main culprit of global
warming.
Planes are responsible for about 3% of man-made CO2 emissions.
Compared to cars and coal-burning power plants, that looks like a
pretty small percentage.
But there’s something else unique to planes that has scientists
concerned.
Gidon Eshel is a climate scientist at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. He
says planes also emit nitrous oxide and water vapor. That’s the
contrail you see. Both of those gasses can trap heat in Earth’s
atmosphere:
“The emissions associated with aviation are very important – roughly
twice as important as CO2 alone because they occur in such high reaches
of the atmosphere.”
Eshel says the effects of nitrous oxide and water vapor are stronger
than when they’re released near the ground.
There’s not much planes can do about flying so high up. But the
airline industry says it’s hard at work to make its planes more fuel
efficient.
Bill Glover directs environmental strategy for Boeing Commercial
Airplanes:
“The distance we could fly on a gallon of gas 50 years ago, we can now
do on less than a quart of gas. What we have ahead of us is more
improvements in materials, engines, aerodynamics, all of those are
going to contribute to fuel efficiency.”
Both Boeing and Airbus have unveiled shiny new planes that get more
miles to the gallon. So airlines should rush out and get the latest
models, right?
Well, it’s not that simple.
For starters, there’s the price tag: anywhere from about 14 million all
the way up to 300 million dollars.
Gueric Dechavanne is an airline industry analyst with OAGback Aviation
Solutions. He says it’s definitely in the airlines’ best interest to
upgrade their fleets. He says the cost of fuel has risen dramatically
over the past couple of years. But Dechavanne says even if airlines
can afford the newest model, it’ll be a long time before they can get
it:
“It’s not as easy as placing the order and getting the airplane today.
From the standpoint of the 787, the latest and greatest, 2014 or 2015
is the earliest delivery you can get it if you place an order today.”
Generally, the younger the airline company, the more fuel efficient
their fleet will be. Dechavanne says that means newer low cost
carriers such as JetBlue, Skybus and Spirit have the newest planes.
He says the so-called legacy airlines – such as Northwest and American
Airlines – have older fleets because they’ve been around for a while.
They have a much harder time upgrading their fleets. Dechavanne says
airlines don’t want to retire a plane before they’ve squeezed a full
life out of it:
“For the majority of U.S. carriers the fleet is still fairly young;
it’s tough for them to replace all of the inefficient airplanes just
because of the fact that fuel has gotten out of control.”
Dechavanne says, instead, some carriers are looking at less expensive
fixes – such as adding winglets to the plane to make it more
aerodynamic.
The experts have advice for travelers, too: Try to avoid connecting
flights.
Climate scientist Gidon Eshel says direct flights are better than
flights with several stops. And although it sounds counterintuitive,
it’s more efficient to take one really long flight a year than a bunch
of shorter flights.
That’s because airplanes have an ideal cruising height – about 30,000
feet up:
“To get there they need to climb a whole lot which makes short flights
relatively inefficient, sometimes very inefficient compared to long
flights.”
Another thing the experts recommend is lightening the load: pack light
and leave the hardcover books at home.
And as much as we all hate jam-packed planes, putting a lot of people
on one flight is actually better for the environment than having extra
legroom.
Methane is one of the worst greenhouse gases contributing to global warming. (Photo by Bill Tarpenning, courtesy of the USDA)
