As mentioned in the last post, one of the two “canaries in the coal mine” that Al Gore talked about in An Inconvenient Truth was the rapid breakup of the Arctic ice shelf.

Gore went on to talk about the break up of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf.

Yesterday, scientists reported that the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf is not alone. The Ayles Ice Shelf, one of Canada’s six ice shelves, no longer exists.

What is so remarkable to me about this article is not just that this is happening, but the level of alarm that the scientists are expressing over this. These scientists know about what is happening to the Antarctic ice shelfs. They know about the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf. And yet, even with all of that knowledge, they are surprised at how quickly things happen: “What surprised us was how quickly it happened.”

An article in the National Post reported described how fast this change took place:

“It turned out it took less than an hour for the ice shelf to calve off in the early afternoon of Aug. 13, 2005″ … ‘If you were standing right on the edge of the shelf, there’d have been this huge 15-kilometre crack as far as you could see in both directions,’ says Copland. … Within an hour, the giant ice island was a kilometre offshore.”

What is even more remarkable is that we are just finding out about this now. What has happened in the last 15 months that we don’t yet know about?

Remember what Al predicted about exactly this sort of breakup? He described how the Earth’s climate is dramatically affected by the “ocean conveyor belt”.

He also described the potentially catastropic effects if this conveyor belt stopped working.

Anyone who has seen An Inconvenient Truth, will probably remember that Al Gore talked about two “canaries in the coal mine”: the Arctic and the Antarctic Peninsula Sea Ice.

Al explained, “Starting in 1970 there was a precipitous drop off in the amount and extent and thickness of the arctic ice cap. It has diminished by 40 percent in 40 years. … That’s not good for creatures like polar bears that depend on the ice.”

Yesterday, the Department of the Interior announced the results of a 12-month study of the polar bear population that confirmed these reports and recommended listing the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

What is so interesting about this is not the mere fact that polar bears may become listed as a threatened species, but for the manner in which the Endangered Species Act is being used.

We are all familiar with stories of how the Endangerd Species Act has been used to protect species.

There are famous cases like the ban on DDT that went into place in 1972 due to the outcry generated from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and the threats to bird populations like the osprey and bald eagle. Ultimately, the ban on DDT has been seen as a key element in the recovery of species like the perigrene falcon.

Another well known example of a remedy is the ban on importation of ivory put in place to protect the Asian and African elephants.

There are more infamous cases like the Tellico Dam whose construction was halted to protect an endangered fish or the northern spotted owl that lead to millions of acres of Pacific Northwest forests being declared protected habitat. (It also led George H.W. Bush to declare that Al Gore was “so far off on the environmental extremes, we’ll be up to our neck in owls and out of work for every American.”)

When we think about endangered species and the possible remedies, we tend to think of things like bans on hunting, commercial restrictions, eliminating the use of certain chemicals, preventing development in certain areas, etc.

What is so unique about the polar bears is that the cause of the population loss isn’t a simple, single thing that can be addressed by banning a particular behavior. The report makes it very clear that the polar bears are not at risk because of hunting, ecotourism, oil spills, pollution from the local oil and gas plants, disease, or predators.

The sole risk to polar bears identified by the report is the receding ice cap which, in turn, is due to global warming.

So what is the remedy to help reverse the course of the polar bear? That is the real question.

Unfortunately, the study takes no position on what reasonable remedies would be except that it does hint that the real problem here is a lack of sufficient regulation. With that said, the proposal does not make any specific recommendations on what sort of regulations would help protect the polar bears.

However, if polar bears are ultimately listed as a threatened species, it would provide a very strong legal basis for organizations to sue the government to try to force regulations to reduce global warming. Environmental groups have a track record of using the legal system to force compliance with the Engangered Species Act and this would open the doors to similar litigation.

In my view point, this is really the first move in a very long chess match. I wouldn’t expect any massive, immediate change because of this. But this does provide environmental groups with another very strong leverage point that they can use to try to force the government into action.

Don’t Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch

One very important point is that this week’s announcement does not mean that the polar bears will be listed as a threatened species.

The next step is for the proposed rule to enter a 90-day public review period in which they will accept comments on the findings. During this period, expect very strong arguments coming out to refute the proposed plan.

Only after this 90-day review period will a determination be made to move forward and list the polar bear as threatened or not.

While this is an important step in the right direction, we could also go back to square one if the ultimate decision is to not list the polar bears.

Report Documents Real World Impact on Polar Bears

The full report of findings from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is pretty dry, but does have some interesting, and also scary, reports of what is happening in the Arctic.

Some of the most disturbing aspects of the study came in the form of recent reports showing the observed effects on polar bears today:

• “During the winter and early spring of 2004, three observations of polar bear cannibalism were recorded. Similar observations had not been recorded in that region despite studies extending back for decades.”
• “In the fall of 2004, four polar bears were observed to have drowned while attempting to swim between shore and distant pack ice in the Beaufort Sea. Despite offshore surveys extending back to 1987, similar observations had not previously been recorded.”
• “In spring of 2006, three adult female polar bears and one yearling were found dead. Two of these females and the yearling had no fat stores and apparently starved to death, while the third adult female was too heavily scavenged to determine a cause of death. This mortality is suspicious because prime age females have had very high survival rates in the past.”

Making the Case

In order for a species to be considered as “threatened” it needs to be established that it is “likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range.”

Therefore, much of the report is focused on looking at current trends and projecting forward to determine whether the species meets the definition above.
In order to establish that there is a threat to the polar bears, the report first needed to establish that there is some sort of change happening that is likely to hurt the species.
The report established that changes are already happening in the Arctic: “The amount of sea ice in 2006 was the second lowest on record (since satellites began recording sea ice extent measurements via passive microwave imagery in 1978).”

Even more importanly, the report concluded that the change was accelerating “due to a positive feedback loop.” (This is is exactly what the cartoon in An Inconvenient Truth showed.)

The report predicted severe changes in the coming years: “Results of a new study … suggest that abrupt reductions in the extent of summer ice are likely to occur over the next few decades, and that near ice-free September conditions may be reached as early as 2040.”

To use a phrase from An Inconvenient Truth, the report looked at these reported changes as canaries in the coal mine indicating a much more subtantial problem looming on the horizon: “If current trends continue, polar bears and other species that require a stable ice platform for survival could become extinct by the end of the century.”

However, the report stopped short of predicting the complete extinction of the polar bears saying that “this opinion is not universally shared. Other polar bear biologists have indicated that it is possible, even with the total loss of summer sea ice, that a small number of polar bears would survive semi-indefinitely and not go extinct provided there is still some ice cover during the winter and marine mammals continued to be available for capture or scavenging.”

It seems to me that it is a pretty serious situation when the conversation at hand is whether a population will go completely extinct or whether a “small number” of the population will survive “semi-indefinitely”. While I suppose this distinction is a technically important one, under both conclusions, the vast majority of the polar bears are dead.

I have been spending a lot of time recently considering in the plight of the American automobile manufacturer and wondering whether I’ve been unduly harsh on them or not for their lack of movement on cleaner cars.

Yes, they could have had an opportunity to take the lead here, but maybe the recent ad campaigns like GM’s “Live Green, Go Yellow” show that they do “get it” and are trying to do the right thing.

Then all of a sudden an article like this comes along and convinces me once again that the American automobile manufacturers just don’t get it.

Let me try to quickly summarize the issue.

In response to the Arab oil embargo of the 70’s Congress passed the “Energy Policy Conservation Act” which established the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for automobiles. (Apparently our “addiction to oil” isn’t anything new.)
The CAFE standards are a very broad measure of the fuel effeciency of the cars produced by a manufacturer.

Between 1974 and 1985, the CAFE standards were agressively increased with the goal of doubling the fuel efficiency of cars.

By 1985, the CAFE standards were set to 27.5 mpg.

For the last 20 years, the CAFE standards have never gone above this level.

Let me just repeat that. For 20 years, the fuel efficiency standards required of automobile manufacturers have not changed.

Then, along comes the Energy Security Leadership Council, a group of “prominent business and military leaders” focused on establishing a “comprehensive, long-term policy to reduce U.S. oil dependence and improve energy security.” They released a report entitled “Recommendations to the Nation on Reducing U.S. Oil Dependence” and one of their first recommendations is to institute a 4% annual increase in the CAFE standards.

For example, go from 27.5 mpg to 28.6 mpg to 29.7, etc.

And what is the reaction from the American auto manufacturers? Did they agree that a 4% annual increase, after 20 years of no increase at all, was reasonable? Did they say that this was the least that they could do to help avert a global crisis? Did they step up to the challenge to put America’s best minds on solving this problem to help solve a national security issue?

No.

They threw up their hands and whined that “the customer made me do it.”

Bob Lutz, a vice chairman at GM, wrote an open letter to the community in which he complained that raising the CAFE standards would “put … the domestic manufacturers, at odds with the desires of most of our customers, namely larger vehicles.”

He continued his whining by saying, “The Japanese government is spending huge amounts on advanced battery research. It would be nice if our government would do the same.”

I’m sorry, but I have very little sympathy for this sort of attitude. GM has been raking in money hand over fist for the past couple of decades selling over-sized cars that the public simply doesn’t need. This is the company the has convinced suburban moms and dads that they literally need a military vehicle to drive little Johnny and Suzy to school.

We are at a point in our history where we need to have leadership. We need smart, thoughtful executives to look into the future and understand that the long term economic benefits are aligned with environmentally conscious business decisions.

It doesn’t take a genius to predict that with all of the political instability in the Middle East and the emerging threat of global warming that we are going to continue to see a big upsurge in fuel efficient vehicles.

But, apparently, the folks at GM refuse to see that the world is changing. Rather than seeing this as an opportunity for innovation and leadership, they are happy to just keep pumping out the same vehicles.

Honestly, if GM and the other manufacturers had taken the lead on this issue and done more to proactively increase the fuel efficiency of their fleets, then we wouldn’t be in a position where we are talking about raising the standards for the first time in 20 years.

Personally, I believe in the innovation and intellectual capabilities of Americans. I believe that if put to the test, we’ll find a way to solve this problem.

Apparently, I have a bit more faith in American ingenuity than GM does.

Yesterday, CNN reported that next year, Toyota should pass General Motors as the world’s biggest auto manufacturer.

When I read that, it made me think back to some of the themes in Who Killed the Electric Car? and wonder how much of the current situation is due to decisions made by both General Motors and Toyota 15+ years ago.

For those who haven’t seen the movie (I’d definitely recommend it if you haven’t), here is the basic background:

• In 1990, the California Air Resource Board (CARB) passed a mandate declaring that by 1998, 2% of all new cars sold by the seven major auto manufacturers in the state of California were to meet ‘zero emission’ standards.
• In response, General Motors developed the EV1, the first production electric vehicle produced and sold by a major auto manufacturer.
• At least according to the movie, the response to the EV-1 was phenomenonal. Individuals like Tom Hanks proudly trumpeted their new car.
• In 2003, the California Air Resource Board “removed the requirement for electric vehicles from the ZEV mandate”.
• GM cancelled the EV1 program soon after.
• As the leases on the EV1s expired, GM reclaimed the cars and destroyed them.

While that part of the story was interesting to me, the part that was even more interesting was the response of the Japanese auto manufacturers.

At least according to the movie, the Japanese auto manufacturers were terrified that the U.S. manufacturers would take this mandate to heart and would get an edge on clean cars. To that end, they launched their own research efforts culimating in the Toyota Prius — the car that has become the poster child for clean, fuel efficient vehicles in the United States.

Toyota has been riding the Prius (and now other hybrid models like the Camry and Highlander) to the bank.

The Prius has become known for its 6-month waiting list.
With the recent increases in gas prices and focus on the enviroment, all of the U.S.-based auto manufacturers have been running to hop on the band wagon to the point that Ford licensed the hybrid technology from Toyota.

In addition, if you look at any major auto advertisement nowadays, nearly every auto manufacturer is trumpeting their clean, fuel efficient cars. GM has launched their “Live Green, Go Yellow” campaign pushing the value of cars running on E85 fuel.

All of this makes me wonder, what would have happened if GM built off of their leadership position? The EV1 was the Prius before the Prius was the Prius. It had the same excitement and waiting list. It had the same monopoly on the green car market. It had celebrities out promoting the product and teaching everyone that it is cool to be green.

Imagine if GM had leveraged their leadership position to create a fleet of clean vehicles rather than just pumping more and more money into their SUV market (including the infamous fuel-guzzling, polluting, vanity vehicle called the Hummer). Would they have averted yesterday’s announcement?
I suppose that only time will tell, but it could very well be that GM has paid a significant price for not being green.

Great news out of Boston today.

Boston is going to become the first city in the nation to impose strict “green” building codes on all new development of large buildings.

Kudos to Mayor Menino and the other town officials to do what is right and necessary!

Thanks to my wife for passing this article on to me.

Previously, I wrote an article on how you can set up your Microsoft Windows machine to help you save money.

Since they, my lovely wife has provided instructions on how to set up Apple MacOS machines similarly.

So, if you are running Apple MacOS X, here are the equivalent set of instructions.

1. Click on the Apple menu in the upper left-hand corner and select “System Preferences”. This will open the System Preferences window.
2. Under the Hardware section, you will see a picture of a light bulb labelled “Energy Saver”. Click on that to go to the Energy Saver options.
3. Click on the menu labelled “Optimization”. There are four options: “Better Energy Savings”, “Normal”, “Better Performance”, and “Custom.”

   Selecting “Better Energy Savings” will change your settings so that:

• The monitor turns off after 5 minutes of inactivity
• The computer will go to sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity.
• When possible, the hard drive will be put to sleep.
4. Close the System Preferences application.

Al Gore is ready to build on the success of “An Inconvenient Truth” and start organizing to solve the climate crisis. He’s working to get hundreds of thousands of messages to Congress demanding real action to stop global warming.  And he’s asking for our help.

Can you help out by signing the petition at the link below? If you do, Al Gore will personally deliver our comments to Congress.  I just did it myself and it only takes a second.

http://pol.moveon.org/climatecrisis/

I am a software engineer by background. So, computers and I are good friends.

But, I understand not everybody out there is on speaking terms with their computers. In fact, I think there are a lot of people who can barely stand their computers.

I wanted to see if I could help folks patch up their relationships with their computers by finding a way their computers can help them save money.

In particular, most computers nowadays have “energy saving” features built into them. Unfortunately, lots of people don’t have these features turned on. So, your computer winds up spending more time turned on, using up electricity, costing you money and ultimately decreasing the lifespan of your computer.

So, if you follow these instructions, hopefully you and your computer will be happy.

First, I am going to start by assuming that most people are running Microsoft Windows XP. If you aren’t sure whether you are running this or not, watch your screen the next time you boot your machine. There should be a full screen message that says “Windows XP” if you are running this.

I will include instructions for people running Apple MacOS in a separate article.

Anyway, if you are running Windows XP, you can follow these instructions:

1. Click on the big “Start” button in the lower left hand corner of your screen.
2. This will pop up a set of menus. If you look in the right column you should see a entry called “Control Panel.” Click on that.
3. This will bring up a new window with lots of pretty icons. If you look through this list (it is in alphabetical order), you should see one called “Power Options.” Double click this.
4. This will bring up yet another window. This is the important one. At the top of the window, you should see a few tabs, the first of which is labelled “Power Schemes.” We’ll start here.
5. About half-way down the page, you should see a setting called “Turn off monitor” with a pull down after it. This setting allows you to determine when your computer should tell your monitor to go to sleep. You can think of this as a smart screensaver. Rather than putting pretty pictures on your screen when you are not using your computer, why not save energy and have your monitor shut off automatically! I have my computer set to “After 5 minutes.” If you are using your computer, it won’t turn off your monitor — it will only turn off your monitor when you stop using your computer for this long. If your computer does shut off your monitor, all you need to do is wiggle your mouse and your monitor will come back on. It is really simple and saves you money.
6. Right below that is a setting called “Turn off hard disks.” Inside your computer, you have what are called hard disks that are used to store information. Without this setting, these are always turned on and waiting for the computer to say, “Go find me some information.” But, if you aren’t using your computer, there is no reason for them to be waiting. I have my computer set to “After 10 minutes.” If you listen carefully, you might hear your hard drive shut down (just a little click) when you aren’t using your computer. But, past that, you won’t even know that it is turned off. As soon as you start using your computer again, the hard drive will fire up. You won’t even notice the difference. Better yet, having your hard drive turn off actually protects it from damage if someone comes along and runs into the computer. The safest position your hard drive can be in is turned off. So, not only are you saving money, but you are protecting your computer.
7. The next two options are “System standby” and “System hibernates.” Both of these are variants of the same thing. They basically say how long your computer should wait before it turns itself off. I don’t think we need to get into the details of the differences here, but suffice it to say suspending your computer puts it into a “low energy usage” mode while hibernation turns off your computer altogether. In both cases, when you restart your computer, it comes back to exactly where you left it. For the purposes of this column, let me just suggest you ignore hibernation for now and just enable standby mode. I have my computer set to “After 30 minutes.”
8. Once you are finished making all of these changes, hit the “OK” button.

Obviously, the best thing you can do to save electricity is to turn your monitor and computer completely off when you aren’t using it. But, we all get busy and walk away from the computer for ‘just a minute’ and then get distracted on to other things.

So, through these simple steps, your computer will take care of itself even if you forget.

Hopefully, this will help you and your computer have a happier existance together.

There’s the saying that “if something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.” In general that is true. But, I’d like to posit that there is at least one example of something that really is as good as it sounds and that is the New England Wind Fund.

I’ll talk more about what the fund is later, but for now, I’d like to put a challenge out there to anyone who is looking to support “green” causes.

I challenge you to find a more cost effective means of supporting these causes than donating to the New England Wind Fund.

Here’s my logic.

First, donations to the New England Wind Fund are 100% tax-deductible. So, immediately, every $1 that you donate really costs you something like 90 cents.

Secondly, through the great work of the Masschusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC) and the Clean Energy Choice Program every single dollar that you give is matched 100% and comes back to your town in the form of grants for renewable energy projects. And we’re not talking chump change here. If you look at the amount of money that various towns have earned, you can see towns that have earned $20,000, $50,000 or even nearly $100,000 in matching grants based on donations to the fund! In addition, you can see that towns are using this money to fund real projects: solar arrays for town buildings, solar trash compactors, etc.
Third, the MTC doesn’t stop there. Every single dollar that you give is matched 100% again in the form of grants to low-income communites for renewable energy projects.

As if all of that wasn’t enough, your original $1 then goes to supporting wind power in New England.

Let me just summarize this to make sure it is clear.

For about 90 cents out of your pocket, you get $3.00 in value supporting clean energy projects. You benefit your local community. You benefit low income areas. You help support wind power. And you get a tax break.

Sound good? Well, it doesn’t stop there. The MTC also has “bonus programs” whereby the town can get even more money based on the percentage of residents who are participating in the program. For example, if Sudbury were to get 3% of all of the households (for argument sake, let’s say that is 150 households) to contribute $5 / month to the New England Wind Fund, the town would get an additional $50 / household, or $7,500 on top of everything else we’ve already discussed.

Show me a better deal than that.

Until then, I am going to put my money in the New England Wind Fund.

Note: If you are wondering where all of this “free money” comes from, here is the answer. The Renewable Energy Trust is funded through a small monthly charge on customer electric bills known as a systems benefit charge. For residential customers, it represents about $0.50 a month or about $6 a year.

One of the common arguments against being green is that it “costs too much”. EnergyStar appliances cost more than non-EnergyStar appliances. A front loading washing machine costs more than a top-loading machine. Hybrid cars cost more than normal cars.

However, the British government has just released a report detailling the costs of not being green.

The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change calls climate change “the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen”, with the threat to shrink global economy by 20%, and result in economic and social disruption equal to the two World Wars and Great Depression.

One of the most significant aspects of this report is the fact that its author, Sir Nicholas Stern, is an economist and a former Vice President of the World Bank, not an environmentalist.

While many of the arguments in the report may seem like old hat to those in the environmental community, the fact that these same messages are now being delivered by a well respected economist can help move the discussion into the mainstream.

One of the most important conclusions in the report is that the costs of inaction on global warming far outstrip the costs of action. According to the report, “If we don’t act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more.”

The report continues saying, “In contrast, the costs of action – reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change – can be limited to around 1% of global GDP each year.”

In addition, the review indicates that there are substantial economic opportunities to be found in solving the climate change problem. The Stern review indicates markets for low-carbon energy products could be worth at least $500 billion per year by 2050, if action is taken, using already available technologies and know-how. This would employ an increase of many millions of persons.

I think that in the coming years we are going to see more and more business people are going to realize that going green can be as much about dollars and cents as about any moral issues.

There are already stories about ski resorts reducing greenhouse gas emissions because they realize that their businesses will be destroyed if climate change is not averted.

I predict that the same forces that drove small businesses and municipalities to support health care reform will drive business folk and politicians of all sorts to “go green”.

It looks like the British are taking the environment very seriously.

Only weeks after the release of the Stern Review on the Econmics of Impact Change, the British government has put their money where their mouth is and has given the go ahead to two wind farms. The larger of the two farms will consist of over 300 turbines and will be able to provide energy for 750,000 households.

Hopefully Massachusetts will be able to make progress on our own wind farm project, Cape Wind.

On Saturday, I went to Marty Meehan’s town meeting entitled “Climate Change: Local Solutions to a Global Crisis”.

One of the most amazing aspects of this meeting was how many people came. On a Saturday only 9 days before Christmas, there were approximately 1,000 people there. The meeting was originally going to be in the library which seated about 200 people. About a week before the event, Meehan’s staff realized that this wasn’t going to be enough space so they moved the event to another room that would seat 400. Only 3 or 4 days before the even, Meehan’s staff realized that even this wouldn’t be enough so, they moved, yet again, to the final location.

This sort of attendance is exactly what we need to help show politicians that this is a serious issue that we care about.

One of the people who “gets it” is Deval Patrick, our new governor-elect.

A few weeks before the conference, Marty Meehan called Deval and asked him if he would attend the town meeting. Deval said yes. Here is the newly elected governor who is in the middle of putting together his entire administration and he takes the time to come and spend some time at a town meeting on the environment. Even better than that, Deval didn’t come to the conference, make a speech, and then leave. He sat through the entire 2+ hour meeting. Either he’s putting on a great face, or he really does think this is important stuff!
Just a day before the conference, Deval announced that he would be creating a cabinet-level Secretary of Energy and Environment. This is the first reason I think Deval “gets it”. He understands that this is going to be a critical issue. More importantly, Deval also understands that the environment is as much of an economic opportunity as it a challenge. To that end, Deval has stated that this position will be a member of the economic sub-cabinet.
At the meeting, Deval gave a 15-minute talk about how important the environmental issues are to him. Deval started his discussion by unequivocally saying that as soon as he is in office Massachusetts will join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). This is in stark contrast to outgoing governor Mitt Romney who pulled out of RGGI at the last second after months of deliberations.

In addition, Deval expressed his support for Cape Wind. In classic Deval-style, he cautioned the Cape Wind supporters against marginalizing all of the Cape Wind opponents. He said that some of the criticism of Cape Wind is fair and should be integrated into the proposals to make the best possible solution.

But the best sign that Deval “gets it” came when he asked the head of the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production to take the official governor’s car and “make it green”. As Deval put it, he intends to lead by action.

This is the definition of leadership. Deval doesn’t need to pander to the green community — he already has their vote locked up. Nobody would blame Deval for skipping out on a town meeting to talk about environmental issues as he is pulling his cabinet together. Deval didn’t have to take the controversial position of supporting Cape Wind — in fact, this probably cost him support from some wealthy folks.
It seems like it has been a long time since we’ve seen a politician motivated by doing what is right rather than what is expedient.

I think Deval is going to be a refreshing break from the past and will really help move Massachusetts back into the forefront on environmental issues.

-Eric Richard