Resilience Roundup – Oct 16

October 16, 2014

NOTE: Images in this archived article have been removed.

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A roundup of the news, views and ideas from the main stream press and the blogosphere.  Click on the headline link to see the full article.


Can We Earn a Living on a Living Planet?

Chuck Collins, The American Prospect
It has been a tough couple of years in the effort to unite labor, community, and environmental groups, an alliance that has always been strained.

The extractive energy sector—coal, gas, oil—has historically had strong union representation and well-paying jobs. Tensions rose in 2011 after the Sierra Club escalated their campaign to close coal plants and 350.org, the climate protection group led by activist Bill McKibben, called for a halt to the Keystone XL Pipeline project. Even Obama’s relatively mild order this past June on reducing pollution from power plants was opposed by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the Mineworkers.

“Where is the transition plan for workers? Why isn’t this part of your demands?” At a February 2013 meeting of labor and environmental activists, Damon Silvers, the AFL-CIO’s director of policy and special counsel, yelled and pounded the table, “Where is the transition plan for workers? Why isn’t this part of your demands?”

Divisions will increase in the coming years, as two competing urgencies collide. Labor and community justice organizations will demand jobs, economic growth, and reductions in inequality. And environmental activists will increase pressure to curtail fossil fuel production in the face of climate disruptions. Both the politics and the policies of these goals seem to diverge. But must they?…

After talking to labor people like Ron Blackwell and Joe Uehlein in Washington, D.C., I am eager to talk to supporters of ecological economics. I am invited, as a guest, to attend a board retreat of the Post Carbon Institute, a group of respected intellectuals and activists rooted in the limits-to-growth tradition. We meet at a stunning mountaintop conference center, Earthrise, looking north over Petaluma, California, with gorgeous views in every direction…


Mark Carney: most fossil fuel reserves can’t be burned

Jessica Shankleman for BusinessGreen via The Guardian
The governor of the Bank of England has reiterated his warning that fossil fuel companies cannot burn all of their reserves if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change, and called for investors to consider the long-term impacts of their decisions.

According to reports, Carney told a World Bank seminar on integrated reporting on Friday that the “vast majority of reserves are unburnable” if global temperature rises are to be limited to below 2C…


Pentagon: We Could Soon Be Fighting Climate Wars

Tim McDonnell, Mother Jones
In one of its strongest statements yet on the need to prepare for climate change, the Defense Department today released a report that says global warming "poses immediate risks to US national security" and will exacerbate national security-related threats ranging "from infectious disease to terrorism."

The report, embedded below, builds on climate readiness planning at the Pentagon that stretches back to the George W. Bush administration. But today’s report is the first to frame climate change as a serious near-term challenge for strategic military operations; previous reports have tended to focus on long-term threats to bases and other infrastructure…

Link to report pdf


Republicans flail about looking for alternative to climate denialism

David Roberts, Grist
As I have said before, the GOP position on climate is unstable, both intellectually and politically. You can’t credibly deny the science at this point, but if you accept it, “do nothing about it” is an incoherent response. They’ve only gotten away with it for this long because the media and the public don’t care enough to press them on it.

Climate hawks are always predicting that now, finally, is the time when that position will start to crumble. I’ve predicted it myself, and been wrong, or at least premature.

Nonetheless, it really does feel like something is starting to happen. The GOP’s incoherent climate shuck-and-jive is under pressure and the cracks are starting to show…


How much of China’s carbon dioxide emissions is the rest of the world responsible for?

Mat Hope, Carbon Brief
China is the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, by far. The country produces more than a quarter of the planet’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.

World leaders increasingly reference China’s spiralling emissions as a reason why it should commit to dealing with climate change.

But is it fair to ask China to lead the way? After all, a hefty share of the pollution rising out of China’s smokestacks comes from factories churning out TVs, mobile phones and cheap toys for the rest of the world…


Fracking boom will not tackle global warming, analysis warns

Damian Carrington, The Guardian
An unrestrained global fracking boom that unleashes plentiful and cheap gas will not tackle global warming by replacing coal and cutting carbon emissions, according to a comprehensive analysis that takes into account the impact on the rest of the energy supply.

Burning natural gas produces half the carbon dioxide released by coal, and shale gas proponents argue that gas can therefore be a “bridge” fuel, curbing emissions while very low carbon sources such as renewable and nuclear energy are ramped up.

But a new analysis published in the journal Nature shows that a gas boom would cut energy prices, squeezing out renewable energy, and is likely to actually increase overall carbon emissions. The researchers conclude that only new interventions, such as a long-sought international climate change deal or significant global price on carbon pollution, would be effective in tackling warming…


Price fall hastens decline of ‘big oil’ as Western majors retreat

Ron Bousso and Dmitry Zhdannikov, Reuters
This year’s fall in energy prices is hastening the decline of big oil, as the seven Western majors sell-off assets, cut investment, return money to shareholders and shrink in size, leaving ever more output to small producers and state firms.

Companies that were already deep in the red when the price of Brent was at $109 a barrel last year are having to redraw business plans for prices as low as $90…


The price-cost squeeze, and the impact on energy cash flow

Stephen Kopits, Platts Blog
From late 2011, my presentations posed a simple question: “What if E&P costs continue to rise, and oil prices don’t?”…

How would it all play out?

Three years later, we know the answer: The oil majors’ free cash flow would plummet…


U.S. Oil Producers May Drill Themselves Into Oblivion

Matthew Phillips, Bloomberg
Remember the fall of 2008? As the world spun out of control and the price of everything crashed, a barrel of oil lost 70 percent of its value over about five months. Of course, prices never should’ve been as high as $146 that summer, but they shouldn’t have crashed to $40 by the end of that year either.

As the oil market has recovered, there have since been three major corrections, when prices have fallen at least 15 percent over a few months. We’re now in the midst of a fourth, with oil prices down more than 20 percent since peaking in late June at around $115 a barrel. They’re now hovering in the mid-$80 range and could certainly go lower. That’s good news for U.S. consumers, who are finally starting to reap the rewards of the shale boom through low gasoline prices. But it could spell serious trouble for a lot of oil producers, many of whom are laden with debt and exaggerating their oil reserves…


The original shale gas field is tanking

Mason Inman, Beacon Reader
Production from the original shale gas field, Texas’s Barnett, is declining—at least according to data from the state. Federal stats, from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) show a decline, too, but not nearly as sharp. Who’s right?…


Dilemma in the Marcellus Shale: How to dispose of radioactive oil and gas waste?

Anya Litvak, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
…Mr. Ying’s company is marketing a new radiation detector that can instantly categorize the different types of radioactive materials present in waste and their concentrations.

Today, the most likely solution to deal with radioactive oil and gas waste is to dilute it with non-radioactive materials, such as soil, and then send it to local landfills…


How Putin Became a Central Figure in the First Ever Vote to Ban Fracking in Texas

Steve Horn and Alexandra Tempus, This Changes Everything
On September 8, a Texas state regulatory agency sent a letter to United States Secretary of State John Kerry, suggesting that U.S. anti-fracking activists are receiving funding from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“It is reasonable to assume,” Texas Railroad Commissioner David Porter wrote, “that their intention is to increase their market share of natural gas production and distribution as Russia is the second largest producer of natural gas in the world.”

This move by Texas coincides with the lead up to an Election Day referendum on the state’s first proposed city-wide fracking ban, to be held in the city of Denton on November 4. But this particular move by Texas to discredit activists is not a new one. In fact, it highlights one way climate campaigners have previously been tracked and monitored by intelligence agencies, public relations firms, and their powerful clients to create “actionable intelligence.” That is, information that could help undermine and eventually defeat social movements…


Tar sands oil imports: EU accused of putting commerce before the environment over plans to abandon ‘highly polluting’ label

Cahal Milmo, The Independent
Shipments of oil sands – one of the most damaging forms of fossil fuel – into Britain and Europe are set to rocket after plans to have them labelled as “highly polluting” were abandoned.

Campaigners accused the EU of caving into oil producers and putting commerce before the environment, after it appeared to water down proposals to restrict imports of oil sands as part of ongoing trade talks with America and Canada…


Confirmed: California Aquifers Contaminated With Billions Of Gallons of Fracking Wastewater

Mike G, DeSmogBlog
After California state regulators shut down 11 fracking wastewater injection wells last July over concerns that the wastewater might have contaminated aquifers used for drinking water and farm irrigation, the EPA ordered a report within 60 days.

It was revealed yesterday that the California State Water Resources Board has sent a letter to the EPA confirming that at least nine of those sites were in fact dumping wastewater contaminated with fracking fluids and other pollutants into aquifers protected by state law and the federal Safe Drinking Water Act…


In Texas, a Fight Over Fracking

Clifford Krauss, New York Times
Many Texans have long held the oil and gas industry as dear to their hearts as a prairie range full of feeding cattle. Now suddenly that love is being tested here in a local election, where a grass-roots campaign against gas producers has pushed the industry into a corner.

The battle is over a proposed city ban on hydraulic fracturing — the technique of blasting shale rock with water, sand and chemicals to dislodge oil and gas, often called fracking — in a referendum on Nov. 4. No city in Texas has ever come close to passing such a measure.

But in this college town of 130,000 outside Dallas, the producers find themselves in an uphill battle against a diverse band of doorbell ringers and lawn- sign distributors who are working day and night…


How International Lawsuits Could Punish Carbon Emitters Even If Governments Don’t

Jeff Spross, Cliamte Progress
Courtrooms could be the next battlefield in the fight against climate change, according to a new report out of Canada.

The paper, put out Thursday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and West Coast Environmental Law, argues that climate science has advanced enough that current and future damages from climate change could start being divvied up amongst various polluters and companies in fossil fuels. When combined with the workings of international litigation, it opens up the possibility of legal liability for those entities — and not just in their home countries, but in any country where damages from climate change are felt…


Lockheed Claims Breakthrough on Fusion Energy

Andrea Shalal, Scientific American
Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready in a decade.

Tom McGuire, who heads the project, said he and a small team had been working on fusion energy at Lockheed’s secretive Skunk Works for about four years, but were now going public to find potential partners in industry and government for their work.

Initial work demonstrated the feasibility of building a 100-megawatt reactor measuring seven feet by 10 feet, which could fit on the back of a large truck, and is about 10 times smaller than current reactors, McGuire said…


Lockheed Martin Says It’s a Decade Away From Compact Nuclear Fusion. Here’s Why You Should Be Skeptical.

James West, Mother Jones
Rosi Reed, an assistant professor of physics at Wayne State University, and a researcher at the Large Hadron Collider, run by European Organization for Nuclear Research, said that the most impressive part of the breakthrough was the increase in energy output—ten times greater than that of previous reactors. "So this means that this reactor can be a lot smaller," she said.

Of course, Reed said, while it’s exciting news, the promise is all theoretical at this stage. Should we believe the hype?…


Parisians have their say on city’s first €20m ‘participatory budget’

Richelle Harrison, The Guardian
After barely six months in power, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has put in place the city’s very first ‘participatory budget’ project, setting aside €426m (£335m) – 5% of the city hall investment budget – from now until 2020. It’s the largest sum of public money ever to have been allocated to such a scheme. Proclaiming she was “handing the keys of the budget to the citizens,” the Socialist mayor put the question to her fellow Parisians: what would they do to improve their city?

Between 24 September and 1 October, the Budget Participatif poll gave city-dwellers the chance to choose from 15 projects; from building pop-up swimming pools to erecting big screens throughout the capital (neither made the final cut). More than 40,740 Parisians voted – online and in some 200 locations across the city. The winners list features nine, largely environmental projects which will be implemented from January, their total cost just shy of €20m (the amount allocated for the year 2014-2015)…

News clippings image via shutterstock. Reproduced at Resilience.org with permission.

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