Cows burp methane gas and their manure also emits methane. Methane is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
(Photo courtesy of the USDA)
The US Department of Agriculture
is planning to give dairy farmers
more money to cut some of their
greenhouse gas emissions. Rebecca
Williams has more:
Transcript
The US Department of Agriculture
is planning to give dairy farmers
more money to cut some of their
greenhouse gas emissions. Rebecca
Williams has more:
Cows are gassy. They burp methane gas and their manure also emits methane. Methane is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
In Copenhagen, Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack promised to cut greenhouse gas emissions on farms. He said the government will be giving farmers more money for methane digesters. They’re machines that capture methane from manure.
Katie Feeney is with the environmental group Clean Air Council.
“If you can make it easy for them and cost effective for them to be sustainable, to reduce their emissions, then I foresee a lot more people participating in programs such as that.”
But some environmentalists say voluntary programs are not enough. They say big dairy farms should be regulated more.
Starting in the New Year, all kinds of businesses will have to report their greenhouse gas emissions. But there’s a big exception: large concentrated animal farms don’t have to.
Bill Weihl is currently working on clean energy at Google. Before joining Google in early 2006, he was CTO at Akamai Technologies.
(Photo courtesy of Google)
Chances are that you’ve visited the
website google.com. Google is
not only a leader in online tech, but
it’s also investing in high-tech
alternative energy, especially different
kinds of solar power. Lester Graham
talked with Google’s Green Energy
Czar – yes, that’s his real title – Bill
Weihl. His job is not only
to make Google more energy efficient,
but to investigate and invest in new,
cleaner energy use and generation:
Transcript
Chances are that you’ve visited the
website google.com. Google is
not only a leader in online tech, but
it’s also investing in high-tech
alternative energy, especially different
kinds of solar power. Lester Graham
talked with Google’s Green Energy
Czar – yes, that’s his real title – Bill
Weihl. His job is not only
to make Google more energy efficient,
but to investigate and invest in new,
cleaner energy use and generation:
Lester Graham: Last year, a report indicated performing two Google searches from a desktop computer could generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea. How true is that?
Bill Weihl: We think, as, in fact, does the scientist who was behind most of the data there, that that report was actually off – that you, in fact, could do several hundred Google searches, if not more, for the emissions that are involved in boiling enough water to make a cup of tea.
Graham: What is Google doing to reduce energy consumption, or, at least, reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
Weihl: We have cut our energy consumption in our data centers – data centers are the, you know, big facilities that contain lots and lots of servers. We have cut the energy usage in those facilities by over 50%.
Graham: Is there anything we can do so that when we do use Google we’re being as energy efficient as possible?
Weihl: If you’re buying a new computer, look for one that’s energy efficient. And in the US that means look for one, at a minimum, that’s Energy Star compliant. Laptops also tend to be more energy efficient than desktops, in part because just to make the battery last long enough to be useful, they have to work really hard in designing them to make them energy efficient. The second thing you can do is when you’re not using your system, when it’s sitting there idle, you can set it so that it will go to sleep automatically, or manually, if for some reason it doesn’t go to sleep automatically, you can very easily tell it to go to sleep. That’s much more convenient, obviously, that shutting it down, having to reboot, and restart everything. And it uses about the same energy in stand-by mode as it does when it’s off – which is, in the order of 1 to 5 watts, far less than it uses when it’s just sitting there idle with the screen on and doing nothing.
Graham: Let’s look beyond the world of computers. Google has invested in research for energy efficiency in cars and electric generation. You have a program that’s called ‘R.E. is less than C’ or ‘renewable energy for less than the cost of coal.’ That’s ambitious. Is it realistic?
Weihl: First of all, it’s hugely ambitious. Secondly, I believe it is realistic. And third, I think it’s absolutely necessary. Today, coal is, by far, the cheapest form of energy, or electrical energy, that we consume, except perhaps for hydroelectric power, which is comparable in cost. But at least in this country, and most of the developed world, we’re not going to be building large amounts of new hydroelectric generating capacity. We’ve already dammed most of the rivers that are worth damming. We are, however, still building new coal plants. And coal is not only very cheap, but also it is, by far, the dirtiest, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, of any of the sources of energy that we use. So I think it is necessary, in terms of dealing with the climate crisis that we are facing, to find a way to, over time, replace coal with cleaner sources of energy. And the only way, as a society, I think that we’re going to do that is if it makes economic sense. So that’s why we really started to focus on this initiative we call ‘R.E. less than C’ – to really try to drive innovation as rapidly as possible on the technology for generating renewable power to try to drive its cost down very quickly.
Graham: Bill Weihl is the Green Energy Czar for Google. Thanks very much for your time, I appreciate it.
An author of the report says they accounted for the housing bubble burst, and they still found that being close to a wind turbine did not affect how quickly a home sells.
(Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
A new study finds living near
a wind turbine does not have
a noticeable impact on the
value of your home. Rebecca
Williams has more:
Transcript
A new study finds living near
a wind turbine does not have
a noticeable impact on the
value of your home. Rebecca
Williams has more:
Researchers looked at the sale prices of almost 7500 homes around the country over eleven years. The homes were as close as 800 feet to a turbine or as far as 10 miles away.
Ryan Wiser is a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He’s an author of the report. He says being near a wind turbine did not have a widespread impact on property values.
“There may be still some sense that the aesthetics of a place has been impacted either positively or negatively and that may affect one’s impression of value, even if it doesn’t affect actual home sales prices.”
Wiser says they accounted for the housing bubble burst, and they still found that being close to a wind turbine did not affect how quickly a home sells.
Europe was the first to do carbon cap-and-trade, four years ago.
(Photo courtesy of NASA)
Congress is haggling over a climate
bill that includes a carbon cap-and-
trade system. In many ways, it’s
similar to the one the European Union
put in place several years ago. Liam
Moriarty looks at what
the European experience has been and
what the lessons for the US might be:
Transcript
Congress is haggling over a climate
bill that includes a carbon cap-and-
trade system. In many ways, it’s
similar to the one the European Union
put in place several years ago. Liam
Moriarty looks at what
the European experience has been and
what the lessons for the US might be:
Slashing greenhouse gas emissions is hard. Our economy is powered mostly by fossil fuels. Switching to clean fuels will be disruptive and expensive, at least to start with.
So how do we get from here to there? The approach that’s proving most popular is what’s called “cap-and-trade.” It works like this – first, there’s the cap.
“We’re going to put an absolute limit on the quantity of carbon-based fuels that we’re going to burn. And we’re going to develop a system to make sure we’re not burning more fossil fuels than that.”
Alan Durning heads the Sightline Institute, a sustainability-oriented think tank in Seattle. He explains that once you put the cap in place…
“Then, we’re going to let the market decide who exactly should burn the fossil fuels based on who has better opportunities to reduce their emissions.”
That’s the “trade” part. Companies get permits to put out a certain amount of greenhouse gases. Outfits that can cut their emissions more than they need to can sell their unused pollution permits to companies that can’t.
The cap gets ratcheted down over time. There are fewer permits out there to buy. Eventually even the most polluting companies have to reduce their emissions, as well.
The goal is to wean ourselves off dirty fuels by making them more expensive. And that makes cleaner fuels more attractive.
Europe was the first to do carbon cap and trade, four years ago. And things got off to a rough start. They set the cap on emissions too high and way overestimated the number of permits – or allowances – that companies would need.
“We have too many allowances. Simple supply means that the prices of those allowances crashes. They don’t have much value, and therefore the price went down to close to zero.”
That’s Vicki Pollard. She follows climate change negotiations for the European Commission. She says the whole system got knocked out of kilter.
For the first two years, European carbon emissions actually went up. After the collapse of Phase One, big changes were made. The next phase of the trading system has a tighter cap, more stringent reporting requirements and enforcement with teeth.
Today, Europe’s on track to meet its current emissions target. But environmentalists, such as Sanjeev Kumar with the World Wildlife Fund in Brussels, say those targets are still driven more by politics than by science.
“We have a cap that’s very weak, i.e. that means that it doesn’t mean that we’re going to achieve the levels of decarbonization that we need within the time scale.”
Leading climate scientists say we have to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by the middle of this century to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Business still has concerns about the EU cap and trade scheme. Folker Franz is with BusinessEurope, sort of the European version of the US Chamber of Commerce. He says companies worry about the additional cost of carbon emissions putting them at a competitive disadvantage.
“If you produce one ton of steel, you emit roughly one ton of CO2. So any ton of steel produced in the EU is right now some 17 dollars more than outside the European Union. And that makes a difference.”
But, Franz says, European businesses accept the need to take prompt action on climate change and are on board with the stricter cap and trade rules coming over the next few years.
Americans have watched Europe struggle with carbon cap-and-trade. The Sightline Institute’s Alan Durning says we can benefit from Europe’s willingness to break new ground.
“It was a big advance when they started it, because nothing like it had ever been done. But, it’s not the be-all-and-end-all. In fact, the United States now has an opportunity to learn from their mistakes and leapfrog ahead to a much better climate policy.”
Durning says an American cap and trade system could avoid the costly stumbles that’ve hampered Europe’s carbon reduction efforts.
Indonesia's peat forests are home to Sumatran tigers, Asian elephants and orangutans.
(Photo by Ann Dornfeld)
When the peat is burned, it releases tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.
(Photo by Ann Dornfeld)
Officials from every country in the
world have gathered in Copenhagen
this week to build the
framework for a global climate treaty.
One of the goals is to slow the
destruction of forests in developing
countries. Those forests process and
store massive amounts of carbon dioxide.
Ann Dornfeld reports:
Transcript
Officials from every country in the
world have gathered in Copenhagen
this week to build the
framework for a global climate treaty.
One of the goals is to slow the
destruction of forests in developing
countries. Those forests process and
store massive amounts of carbon dioxide.
Ann Dornfeld reports:
Preserving forests will be a huge debate in Copenhagen. Poor countries want wealthier countries to compensate them for not cutting the forests for lumber and to convert it to farmland. To find out why that might be important, you have to visit a place like this peat forest on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
(sound of the forest)
Forests like this one are home to orangutans, Sumatran tigers and Asian elephants. But these forests may be more important for what lies beneath their marshy floors. The peat is composed of thousands of years’ worth of organic material. Indonesia’s peat forests are storage units for much of the world’s carbon. And they’re being destroyed at an alarming rate.
Not far down the road, Greenpeace Indonesia campaigner Bustar Maitar looks out on a charred landscape. You’d never know a forest stood here just a few months ago.
“Is the no more ecosystem here. No more forest here.”
Only a few burnt tree trunks are standing. Sour smoke curls up from the blackened ground. Maitar says this fire has been burning for a month.
“Fire is coming from not from in the top of the ground, but the haze is coming from inside. It means it’s the underground fire, especially in peatland. And underground fire is very difficult to handle.”
Indonesia’s peat forests are rapidly being logged, drained and burned in order to clear the land for tree farms and palm oil plantations.
The peat can be dozens of feet deep. When it’s burned, the carbon it’s been storing is released as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. All of that burning peat has made Indonesia the world’s third largest emitter of CO2.
Until recently, industrialized nations topped the list of greenhouse gas emitters. Now the United States shares that shortlist with developing nations like China, India and Brazil. As these countries industrialize, demand for timber and open space has stripped many of their forests bare. But leaders of developing countries insist their nations should be allowed to do what it takes to build their economies – even if that leads to climate change.
Paul Winn works on forest and climate issues for Greenpeace. He says the only alternative is for wealthy countries to pay developing countries to slow their emissions.
“If the industrialized world is serious about climate change, it’s essential. It just has to be.”
Winn says wealthy countries have pledged 45 billion dollars so far to help poor countries reduce emissions. But he says that’s just a start.
“If you compare that to what the industrialized world spent on protecting its banks and its financial institutions during the financial crisis, it’s a pittance. And it’s far more essential that they do it now. Because these forests are threatened, and the emissions that go up into the atmosphere are going to come back and bite the industrialized world if they don’t fund its protection.”
Some of the funding plans on the table at Copenhagen would still involve drastic changes to the world’s forest ecosystems. The UN’s current plan would give pulp and paper corporations in Indonesia carbon credits to convert peat forests into acacia plantations.
Winn says that’s the opposite of what needs to happen. Greenpeace and other environmental groups want industrialized countries to fund a moratorium on logging.
One complicating factor is the rampant corruption in many developing countries.
“It is a concern. And I would imagine that’s why many of the industrialized countries haven’t committed to funding.”
Winn says a thorough verification process would ensure that if countries allowed logging, they’d have to repay donor nations.
Winn is in Copenhagen to promote forest protection in the developing world. He says he doesn’t expect anything major to come out of this conference – but hopefully it will lay some groundwork.
The ReStore sells everything from building supplies to power tools to toilets and sinks.
(Photo courtesy of the Habitat for Humanity of Huron County, Michigan)
88 cents of every dollar from this ReStore go back to Habitat for Humanity homes.
(Photo courtesy of the Habitat for Humanity of Huron County, Michigan)
Home improvement projects cost
a lot of money. Some environmentalists
have found a way to save some money,
conserve resources, and help other
people get into homes. Lester Graham
reports:
Transcript
Home improvement projects cost
a lot of money. Some environmentalists
have found a way to save some money,
conserve resources, and help other
people get into homes. Lester Graham
reports:
It seems like my friend Matt Grocoff with Greenovation TV is always working on a home improvement project. Not too long ago, he asked me to go with him to his favorite store. So we headed down the road where all the big box home improvement stores are in his hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, but that’s not where we ended up.
MG: “Just about anything I need, my first stop is always a re-use center. My favorite is, of course, the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. Today I’ve gotta find a– a, uh– what do you call them? A sander, a hand sander, a belt sander?”
Matt turned to Jackie Hermann who manages this ReStore. And she pulled a case from the shelf in back.
JH: “This absolutely beautiful Porter Cable professional random orbit sander with dust collection.”
MG: “This is gorgeous. This is exactly what I need. And how much is this?”
LG: “Looks like it’s never been used.”
MG: “Almost new condition. $35.00. And it’s used material that’s not going to a landfill or sitting in somebody’s basement not being used. And here I get to use it and save money. This is another one of the things where we can debunk the myth that going green costs more.”
Okay, so Matt got a good deal and it extends the useful life of a pretty good tool. But the idea is to raise money for Habitat for Humanity to help get people into homes, so I had to ask Jackie about that.
LG: “How much of that money actually goes to Habitat for Humanity and building houses for folks?”
JH: “We have a 12% administrative overhead, so 88-cents on every dollar into a habitat home.”
There are about 600 of these ReStores across the nation. The administrative overhead varies a bit from store to store, but the money raised at each store goes to homes in that store’s local area.
Jackie says, for her area, that’s meant a bit of a shift for Habitat for Humanity. You might have heard, in Michigan there are a lot of foreclosures.
JH: “We’re not building brand-new as much. We are buying foreclosed houses that are already existing in blighted neighborhoods, and we are rehabbing them and making it livable and improving the neighborhood.”
LG: “You’re recycling houses.”
JH: “We are! We’re recycling houses also. So, when Lowe’s, for instance, donated a large quantity of items, we kept a bunch aside for construction. They come and they look though and say what they can use, and then those items are set aside for them. And then as they need them, they use them.”
And anything left over is sold in the ReStore. It’s donations that make ReStore work. It might be overstock from places like Lowe’s or from local contractors. It could be people who are moving or retiring or just don’t need an appliance any longer. They might have extra cabinets, or carpeting, or a perfectly good sink they don’t need.
JH: “The proverbial kitchen sink. Lots and lots and lots of toilets. Light fixtures, flooring, doors, windows, fasteners.”
MG: “Lester, let me show you some of the stuff they’ve got here. My wife and I spent months looking for a really high-quality, affordable, high-efficiency, front-loading washer. This is a front-loading washer and dryer. (taps on appliance) In fact, this is the same model that we bought. We paid $600 for ours. Here, at the ReStore, it’s $200. And Jackie, how do we know that this works?”
JH: “Everything’s been tested. And, it’s guaranteed for two to three months – I’m really not picky about that.”
Some things are used, some are new. It all works.
Matt Grocoff with Greenovation.TV says it keeps stuff out of the landfill, it means perfectly good building materials and appliances for home improvement projects, saves resources, and raises money to help people get into a home.
The Good Guide website's turkey rating page.
(Image by Jessi Ziegler)
There’s a new way for consumers to find
out more about the products they buy.
Samara Freemark has the story
of a new online guide that lets you look
up how good products are for you and for
the environment:
Transcript
There’s a new way for consumers to find
out more about the products they buy.
Samara Freemark has the story
of a new online guide that lets you look
up how good products are for you and for
the environment:
The website is called the Good Guide, and it lets consumers get a pretty in-depth look at more than 60,000 foods and household products. The site ranks products by their impacts on health, the environment, and society.
The Good Guide is the brainchild of Dara O’Rourke. He’s a professor of environmental policy at the University of California at Berkley. O’Rourke says consumers don’t have easy access to the information they need to make smart buying decisions.
“What we’re trying to do is bring the best available science, put it in an easy accessible and free format, then get it to people whenever and wherever they make a decision about a product or a company.”
That’s where the Good Guide iphone application comes in. Shoppers can scan barcodes at the store to get instant product information.
That application, and the site, can be found at goodguide.com
The governor is promising to spend another $800,000 for outside legal help and he’s putting money into next year’s budget for a new attorney in the Alaska Department of Law. That attorney’s only job? Dealing with endangered species.
(Photo courtesy of the US Fish And Wildlife Service)
The Governor of Alaska plans to fight
the Endangered Species Act protection
of the polar bear. Rebecca Williams
reports the governor plans on hiring
more lawyers:
Transcript
The Governor of Alaska plans to fight
the Endangered Species Act protection
of the polar bear. Rebecca Williams
reports the governor plans on hiring
more lawyers:
Governor Sean Parnell is picking up where Governor Sarah Palin left off and suing the federal government over the polar bear. Polar bear protections could get in the way of drilling for oil.
He’s now promising to spend another $800,000 for outside legal help and he’s putting money into next year’s budget for a new attorney in the Alaska Department of Law. That attorney’s only job? Dealing with endangered species.
“We’re going to continue to take this fight to the mat to protect our jobs and our economy so that the ESA, the Endangered Species Act, is used to truly protect species and not lock up our opportunities here.”
The Governor says those opportunities are jobs and money connected to oil and gas drilling in the polar bear’s habitat.
Governor Parnell will have more than the polar bear to worry about. Environmental groups are also trying to get several other species on the endangered list – including three types of ice seal.
A big shift away from fossil fuels isn’t scaring off everybody. Some businesses are actually lobbying for climate change legislation.
(Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
As Congress begins debate on climate
change legislation, American businesses
are watching very closely. Some are
worried that a new law could bankrupt
them with energy costs. But others
see a bright future under carbon limits.
Julie Grant reports:
Transcript
As Congress begins debate on climate
change legislation, American businesses
are watching very closely. Some are
worried that a new law could bankrupt
them with energy costs. But others
see a bright future under carbon limits.
Julie Grant reports:
Jeff Holmstead is an environmental attorney and has been working on clean air issues for two decades now. He led the Air Division of the Environmental Protection Agency under the Bush Administration and has worked on some of the most significant environmental regulations in the nation’s history. But he says the current climate change bill is the biggest thing he’s seen.
“It’s a big deal. Much bigger than really any other environmental legislation or regulation than people have had to deal with in the past.”
Holmstead says the stakes are just so high. He says the costs could reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars for American businesses.
“And there’s just also enormous amounts of uncertainty as to how we would fundamentally change our society, which has really grown up largely using fossil fuels. Whether we can truly switch away from that in the kind of time frame that people are talking about.”
But a big shift away from fossil fuels isn’t scaring off everybody. Some businesses are actually lobbying for climate change legislation.
Commercial: “Climate change is real. But solving it is a real opportunity. If we build clean energy technologies in America, we’ll generate the jobs that will power the 21st century and jumpstart our economy. We need a can-do plan that caps greenhouse gas pollution and creates jobs here at home.”
This commercial is not made by a bunch of tree-huggers, liberals, or Al Gore. It stars the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce, and corporate CEOs from Deere and Company and the Eaton Corporation. Eaton makes everything from circuit breakers to hoses to hybrid trucks.
“Yeah, Eaton is a power management company that sales about
15-billion dollars and 70,000 employees worldwide.”
That’s Joe Wolfsberger. He’s in charge of environmental programs at Eaton. The company wants Congress to approve climate change legislation and to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Wolfsberger says it could be a great kick-start for the economy and help create jobs.
“We also see a very big opportunity for Eaton and other companies, especially in this power management area. We’ll be able to provide solutions for people to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions going forward, to help reduce the amount of fuel they consume on the road as part of their operations.”
The company has already created new hybrid transmissions for delivery trucks. They’re used in lots of UPS, Fed-Ex, and Wal-Mart trucks. Wolfsberger says it improves gas mileage 50% to 70%.
Wolfsberger says a lot of companies are still questioning whether climate change is real. He says Eaton CEO Alexander Cutler gets asked about it a lot.
“And his response to them is, ‘it doesn’t really matter if the data is good or not. It doesn’t matter if it’s a normal climatic cycle. The question is, if you as a company can do better, you should do better.’”
But that may be easy to say when your company will benefit from climate change legislation. It’s a lot tougher when your business is producing natural gas or making steel and depends on heavy use of fossil fuels.
Environmental attorney Jeff Holmstead says the price of reducing greenhouse gases is going to be a lot higher for these types of companies if a bill passes. He says that’s what the debate is all about.
“Should we be spending a hundred billion dollars a year, should we be spending a trillion dollars a year? I think most people believe we could significantly reduce our CO2 emissions, it’s just a question of how much we’re willing to pay, and also what we get for that.”
And this what Congress will be debating in the coming months – whether the possibility of higher energy bills is worth the chance to have a more stable climate and more energy independence.
In cap-and-trade, businesses can purchase the right to pollute from other companies that reduce their emissions more than they need to.
(Photo courtesy of the US EPA)
Congress is considering restricting
carbon emissions causing climate
change with a cap-and-trade scheme.
But, recent polls show only a handful
of people have heard of cap-and-trade.
Even fewer understand what it is.
Lester Graham reports cap-and-trade
is not new:
Transcript
Congress is considering restricting
carbon emissions causing climate
change with a cap-and-trade scheme.
But, recent polls show only a handful
of people have heard of cap-and-trade.
Even fewer understand what it is.
Lester Graham reports cap-and-trade
is not new:
We’ve been using the market-based tool to reduce other pollution.
Frank O’Donnell is with the environmental group Clean Air Watch. He says ‘remember acid rain?’ The government ‘capped’ the pollutants causing acid rain. And then came the ‘trade’ part.
“Sources can either reduce their emissions further or purchase the right to pollute from other companies that reduce their emissions more than they need to.”
O’Donnell says that cap-and-trade was cheaper than anybody predicted, and it reduced acid rain. But it didn’t eliminate it.
“And the reason is that the cap-and-trade target was essentially a politically-driven target. It was not one based fully on science.”
In fact, the US EPA is now proposing cutting acid rain pollutants more.
O’Donnell thinks a cap-and-trade scheme for carbon emmissions could be far more susceptible to political maneuvering.
Cows burp methane gas and their manure also emits methane. Methane is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
