Saturday, February 14, 2009

Scientists celebrate dawn of Barack Obama's age of reason. LONDON TIMES

February 14, 2009

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article5728204.ece

Mark Henderson, Science Editor

Opening on the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, the 175th conference of the world's largest science society was always likely to have a celebratory feel to it.

There was indeed a palpable buzz yesterday in the subterranean conference rooms of the two downtown Chicago hotels where the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is holding its annual meeting. The real excitement, however, has had much less to do with Darwin than with the most famous former resident of America's second city — Barack Obama.

This AAAS meeting has been a coming-out party for American scientists after eight years in which they have felt marginalised and ignored. Few sections of American society found George W. Bush's presidency quite as dispiriting as its scientists. From climate change to stem-cell research, the White House was at odds with researchers over virtually all the issues they most cared about.

President Obama has changed all that. With an extra $65 billion (£45 billion) promised for energy and research in his stimulus package, with new policies on global warming and stem cells, and above all with a list of appointments that includes some of the most glittering names in American science, he has transformed the mood of the nation's laboratories — and the mood of this conference.

Debates and lectures that would until recently have been ignored by the White House now stand a real chance of influencing policy. Al Gore, for example, was due to give the keynote address last night. The climate change campaigner and former Vice-President is an insider again now, and many scientists attending the AAAS conference are starting to consider themselves insiders too.

In his inaugural address, President Obama promised to "restore science to its rightful place". When announcing his science team, he said that "promoting science isn't just about providing resources — it's about protecting free and open inquiry. It's about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology." US scientists feel that they finally have in Mr Obama a president who not only supports and values what they do, but who also understands them.

"This Administration is looking at science very differently," said James McCarthy, the AAAS president. "He [President Obama] sees the value of science not just as a way of keeping those strange members of our society employed who want to go off and do quirky things. It plays a really important role in decisions this Administration has to make. He is really valuing the product."

Sean Carroll, a geneticist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin, who gave last night's plenary lecture at the conference, said that the mood had changed overnight. "We haven't ever seen a president talk about the role of science in our culture quite in this way before," he said. "It's a sea change, and an inspiration.

"The past eight years have been a dark period. Very well-established science, like that of climate change, was denied. There was pressure to alter the work of government scientists. The promotion of areas such as stem-cell research was thwarted. In the realm of science education, intelligent design got a lot of attention,

and even encouragement, from the President. That is ridiculous and also demoralising. These were horrible errors, and sent a terrible message to young, aspiring scientists."

That message is already starting to change. Just three days after President Obama's inauguration, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the first human trial of an embryonic stem-cell therapy, which had been held up for months.

He has allowed states to impose strict fuel economy regulations, which Mr Bush had blocked. The US is now expected to lead, rather than to obstruct, efforts to negotiate a new world climate accord in Copenhagen at the end of the year.

There is also great excitement at the President's choices to fill key scientific roles in his Administration. As the AAAS conference opened on Thursday, the Senate began confirmation hearings for John Holdren, the nominee for chief scientific adviser to the White House, and Jane Lubchenco, the nominee for head of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

Both are eminent environmental scientists with impeccable academic credentials. Professor Holdren is a former president of the AAAS, and Professor Lubchenco is a marine biologist. Her predecessor, appointed by President Bush, is an admiral.

As Energy Secretary, the President chose Steven Chu, a Nobel prizewinning physicist who is among the world's most creative thinkers about renewable energy.

"The appointment of talent is spectacular," Professor Carroll said. "He's not just got good people; he's got some of the best people who walk the planet to join his team."

Professor McCarthy, an oceanographer at Harvard University, said that he was particularly impressed with the speed with which this team had been assembled, and that so many stellar scientists agreed to serve. Both were signs of the seriousness with which Mr Obama takes science. "Obama picked and announced it during his transition period. That is, to my knowledge, unprecedented."

It's too late for Planet Earth, says James Lovelock

February 14, 2009

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/camilla_cavendish/article5725106.ece

The Gaia thinker's latest book warns that climate disaster is imminent

Camilla Cavendish

You may feel, as job losses soar and parts of the world descend into turmoil, that you're apocalypsed-out for February. If so, you may not immediately leap at James Lovelock's forthcoming book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia. His warning that climate change is spinning us into a hot world, where billions will starve and whole ecosystems will collapse, is a horror few want to contemplate, leavened only by the faint consolation that those of us lucky enough to live in the British Isles, Siberia, Chile, Canada or New Zealand may survive. But his prophecies are plausible and they will also make you think, which are two good reasons to grit your teeth and read him.

It is human nature to prefer writers who confirm the accepted wisdom to those who speak inconvenient truths. Look at the journalists who warned two years ago that Iceland's banks were over-leveraged. Remember the late fund manager Tony Dye, who was ridiculed for predicting the dotcom bust and was fired by his employer, Phillips & Drew, only weeks before the stock market turned. The media has been similarly dismissive of scientists who fear that it is too late to avert serious climate change. We prefer those who warn that there are dangers, but that they are far off and containable. Four years ago, when Lovelock forecast widespread devastation, he was generally dismissed as a lovable "maverick", a word that always makes me sit up because it is a favourite weapon of the Establishment to fend off difficult ideas.

Suddenly, in 2009, Lovelock's fears strike a chord. The Vanishing Face of Gaia has been hailed as "the most important book for decades" by Andrew Marr, a man not especially sympathetic to green issues or conspiracies. The book is powerful, not only because of the scary scale and speed of change that Lovelock foresees, making the first chapters as pacey as a Hollywood romp, but also because he is a serious, hands-on scientist. While working at Nasa in the 1960s he invented the electron capture detector, which enabled him to point the world to the dangers of the ozone hole and pesticides such as DDT. He has also built spy gadgets for MI6. Nor is he a conventional green. He loathes wind farms, is passionately pro-nuclear and is scathing about "saving the planet". The planet will look after itself, he says. It's humans we need to save, and soon.

What Lovelock calls his "final warning" (he is 90) has new resonance because of the increasingly alarming data that is coming from the observation of everything from species numbers and deforestation to sea levels and Arctic ice. Satellite images and expeditions suggest that Arctic summer sea ice is disappearing much faster than was thought even two years ago. Then, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that this ice would disappear towards the end of this century. Now, scientists at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre, the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research, Cambridge University and elsewhere, are predicting that the summer sea ice may disappear in 20 years.

Why does this matter? Because ice reflects sunlight. A dark iceless sea will absorb it. If the Arctic does an "albedo flip" from light to dark, this could raise sea levels and melt parts of the Arctic permafrost that are keeping the lid on enormous quantities of greenhouse gases. As a result, Jim Hansen of Nasa has said that the IPCC models that expect gradual changes may be woefully misleading. Hansen points out that when temperatures increased to between 2 and 3 degrees above today's level 3.5 million years ago sea levels rose by 25m, not the 59cm being predicted by the IPCC. Like Lovelock, Hansen is dismissed in some quarters as an extremist. I had dinner with him last year in London. He came across as supremely rational.

Even a 5m rise in sea level would dramatically change life for millions of people. While only 2 per cent of the world's land is less than 10m above the mid-tide sea level, it is inhabited by 10 per cent of the world's population. A 5m rise would inundate large parts of cities, including London, New York, Sydney, Vancouver, Mumbai and Tokyo, and leave their surrounding areas vulnerable to storm surges. Shanghai has an average elevation of only 4m. Whole regions of Florida, Louisiana, the Netherlands and Bangladesh would also vanish. This is one reason why the Dutch have been at the forefront of developing renewable energy and floating houses - 60 per cent of them live at or below sea level - and the dykes and pumps they have built are increasingly vulnerable to flooding. The feared 25m rise is predicted to occur within our lifetimes. To put it another way, our grandchildren will be living in this submerged world.

As we begin 2009 there is a striking gap between the tone struck by politicians and business leaders, who are beginning to take climate change seriously, but with a "we can beat it" tone, and scientists who are getting markedly more gloomy. In the past year researchers at the University of East Anglia have suggested that the Gulf Stream will be altered by changes in Arctic temperatures. The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research has stated that world carbon emissions must peak by 2015 and disappear altogether by 2050. Dr Vicky Pope, at the Met Office Hadley Centre, has said that temperatures will rise by 5C by the end of the century if no action is taken. The mainstream view is that such an increase would be catastrophic.

You can question these figures. The Met Office isn't great at predicting the weather three days ahead: how can it know what will happen in 2100? There has been a steady rise in sea level for the past decade but little change - possibly even a drop - in global temperature. This must surely cast doubt on the warming-world thesis, a point made elegantly by Nigel Lawson in his book Appeal to Reason. Lovelock himself admits that there are still huge gaps in our knowledge. The Earth's system is so complex and interconnected that, he says, "we are like a 19th-century physician trying to give a sensible prognosis to a patient with diabetes".

So why is he so sure that the hot world is on its way, within decades? "Compare the Earth with an iced drink," he says. "The drink stays cold until the last of the ice melts ...a great deal of the heat of global heating has gone into warming that huge lump of water, the ocean, and into melting ice." This could help to explain why temperatures have not yet risen. The danger is that they will rise rapidly once the ice disappears, causing the Earth to flip into a permanently hotter state.

"There is a trustworthy indicator of the Earth's heat balance, and that is the sea level. Its rise is a general and reliable indicator that cuts through arguments as to whether some glaciers are melting and others advancing. The sea level rises for two reasons only: from ice on land that melts and from the expansion of the ocean as it warms. It is like the liquid in a thermometer: as the Earth warms the sea level rises."

Even if concerns about sea-ice are overdone, Lovelock thinks that global warming is not the only problem. He is one of the few scientists prepared to address the deeply unfashionable issue of population. Even if we were not pumping so much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere by heating buildings and driving, he believes, the Earth cannot support seven billion people who are destroying natural habitats and species at a rate not seen since the death of the dinosaurs. This is not romantic: by razing forests and making the oceans barren we are reducing the planet's capacity to absorb carbon dioxide. We cannot solve the problem simply by abandoning fossil fuels, he believes. In fact, one theory, of global dimming, suggests that our pollution haze partially shields us from the Sun's heat. If European governments ever deliver on their grand promises to reduce emissions by 60 per cent, the atmosphere may get hotter. What a scary Catch-22.

The thought that maybe nothing can be done will be anathema to the many scientists and entrepreneurs who are being swept up in what I have previously called a new Green Rush, accelerated in the past two weeks by President Obama's declaration of war on global warming. But it is worth thinking through the worst-case scenario. Lovelock believes that many countries will be wiped out by drought but certain temperate ones will remain fertile, rather conveniently including Britain and New Zealand. These will be the "lifeboats" of the world. Their leaders will have to take difficult decisions about who to let on board, creating the hideous spectre of a fortress Britain, with land divided rigidly between high-density cities and intensive farming.

Lovelock's views about energy are equally controversial. Crusty greens who are attracted to the New Ageiness of "Gaia", Lovelock's concept of the Earth as one living whole , will be spitting lentils at his ideas about energy. He believes that renewable energy is "an elaborate scam" made possible by enormous subsidies. He loathes the ugliness of wind farms and thinks that Europe's widespread use of wind "will be remembered as one of the great follies of the 21st century".

It is great to hear someone challenging the accepted wisdom about alternative energy. But he lacks the detailed knowledge that he has about the atmosphere. Tom Burke, of Imperial College (an opponent of nuclear power), says that Lovelock is "very knowledgeable about how Earth systems work, and he is right about the need to integrate science. But he does not apply the same intellectual rigour to his judgments about energy".

Nevertheless, he is right when he rails that environmentalism has come too close to being a religion, "complete with dogma, icons and simple answers to all environmental problems". This book makes you realise that nothing - GM food, nuclear power, family planning - should be taboo. The problem is that his descriptions of the Earth as Gaia, a living system, are so religious in tone.

But Lovelock does offer some hope: for example, that climate change could be reversible through geo-engineering, by reflecting the Sun's heat back into space (for instance, with giant sunshades or artificial clouds) or by fertilising the oceans to grow more algae and remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Meanwhile Lovelock is about to blast off into space, courtesy of Sir Richard Branson's "ultimate upgrade" on Virgin Intergalactic. He wants to see the Earth before she fades from the blue and green we know to the brown that he fears. We must hope that he is wrong. But if we face the possibility that he could be right, we have a better chance to avoid that future.

Anti-coal activists cited in protest at Massey operation

http://sundaygazettemail.com/News/200902030229

February 3, 2009

By Ken Ward Jr.

Staff writer

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Fourteen people were cited by State Police today in two separate protests against Massey Energy's mountaintop removal operations in Southern West Virginia.

Early this morning, five activists chained themselves to heavy equipment at a Massey Energy strip-mining operation near Pettus to protest the company's plans to blast apart Coal River Mountain. A sixth person at the protest identified himself as a member of the news media, but was also cited, police said.

Courtesy photo

Protesters chained themselves to a piece of equipment on a Massey strip mine in Raleigh County today.

Later in the day, eight mountaintop removal opponents were cited after they delivered a letter to Massey Energy President Don Blankenship to a company guard shack, but then refused to leave Massey property, police said.

All 14 people were given tickets for misdemeanor trespassing, said Sgt. M.T. Baylous, a spokesman for the State Police. The violation carries a fine of up to $100, according to state law.

The actions by the groups Climate Ground Zero and Appalachian Mountain Justice are part of a campaign to block Massey's mountaintop removal plans and put a windmill operation at the site instead.

At the mining site, the activists hung one banner that said, "Windmills, Not Toxic Spills" and attached windmill blades to an excavator at the Massey operation near Pettus.

"The governor and county legislators have failed to act, so we're acting for them," said one of the activists, Rory McIlmoil, who has led the Coal River Wind Project campaign.

"They shouldn't allow the wind potential on Coal River Mountain to be destroyed, and the nearby communities endangered, for only 17 years of coal," McIlmoil said. "There is a better way to develop the mountain and strengthen the local economy that will create lasting jobs and tax revenues for this county, and that's with wind power."

Massey Energy officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment this morning.

Citizen groups are opposing Massey's latest mining operation along Coal River Mountain ridges. They argue a windmill project would provide more long-term jobs without blasting apart the hilltops and burying nearby streams. In December, Coal River Mountain Watch issued a report by consulting group Downstream Strategies that concluded a wind operation in the area would provide more jobs and tax revenue than a mountaintop removal mine.

Massey officials have said if environmental groups think wind projects are such a good idea, they should buy land, obtain permits and build such projects themselves.

Gov. Joe Manchin has declined to intervene in the DEP permit reviews for the Massey operation, or to voice any public support for putting a wind project at the site instead. Last year, Manchin aides said the mining already had all of the required approvals. But it turned out that DEP had not signed off on several permit changes and authorizations. DEP has since issued those approvals, and the Sierra Club and Coal River Mountain Watch have appealed them to the state Surface Mine Board.

Courtesy photo

Protesters chained themselves to a piece of equipment on a Massey strip mine in Raleigh County today.

With today's action, environmentalists appear to be renewing civil disobedience tactics against Massey and mountaintop removal in Southern West Virginia.

Previous rallies four years ago led to arrests outside Massey's Goals Coal Co. operations adjacent to an elementary school at Sundial, Raleigh County, and at Massey's headquarters in Richmond, Va. And in March 2007, 13 people were arrested after they occupied the reception area outside Manchin's office at the state Capitol to draw attention to Massey's plan to build a new coal silo near that school.

Citizen groups said today's action was also aimed at protesting Massey's plans to begin blasting at the Coal River Mountain operation, which is near the company's huge Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment.

"Massey could flood the towns of Pettus, Whitesville and Sylvester with toxic coal sludge," said Judy Bonds of Rock Creek. "Blasting at a multi-billion-gallon sludge lake over underground mines could cause the sludge to burst through and kill thousands of people."

NYT: A Tough Week for Coal

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/a-tough-week-for-coal/

February 4, 2009, 8:44 am

By Tom Zeller Jr.

Protesters chained themselves to an excavator at a coal operation in West Virginia on Tuesday. (Photo: West Virginia Blue/Flickr)

The coal industry — which suffers from an image problem to begin with — has had a particularly rough few days. Without additional interpretation, we present a selection of articles, published over just the last 48 hours, from around the Web:

THE GREAT FALLS TRIBUNE
A Bad Week for Coal Plants in North-Central Montana
Last Thursday, the Air Force announced that it had rejected proposals to build a large coal-to-liquid-fuels plant at or near Malmstrom Air Force Base. Tuesday, Southern Montana Electric Generation and Transmission announced it is giving up on a proposed coal-fired power plant northeast of the city, at least for now.

THE CHARLESTON GAZETTE
Anti-Coal Activists Chain Themselves to Equipment at Massey Operation
Fourteen people were cited by State Police today in two separate protests against Massey Energy's mountaintop removal operations in southern West Virginia.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
W.Va. Towns With Bad Well Water Sue Coal Companies
About 250 people with orange and black water in their taps are suing eight coal companies they believe poisoned wells in two southern West Virginia communities.

REUTERS
Georgia Bill Proposes Moratorium on New Coal Plants
Georgia legislators introduced a bill on Tuesday that, if passed, could limit utility use of certain Appalachian coal beginning in 2011 and place a moratorium on new coal-plant construction in the state.

THE DETROIT NEWS
Michigan Governor Says No to Coal
Gov. Jennifer Granholm, in her seventh State of the State address, called Tuesday for a near-moratorium on new coal-fired power plants and a major reduction in reliance on coal for electricity generation over the next decade.

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
Kentucky Utilities Must Spend $140M on Clean Air Settlement
The Justice Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency imposed a $1.4 million civil penalty on Kentucky Utilities for violations of the Clean Air Act at a Mercer county coal-fired plant. In addition, the company is required to spend $135 million on pollution controls.

Coal Country: Appeals Court Rejects Mountaintop Mining Restrictions

http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/02/13/coal-country-appeals-court-rejects-mountaintop-mining-restrictions/

February 13, 2009, 1:24 pm

Posted by Keith Johnson

Dow Jones Newswires' Mark Peters reports:

King Coal may have been knocked to the canvas, but it hasn't been knocked out yet.

A federal appeals court Friday overturned a lower court ruling restricting the controversial coal mining practice known as mountaintop removal. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia reversed the two-year-old decision by Judge Robert Chambers of the Southern District of West Virginia, who had ruled the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers had violated the Clean Water Act in issuing permits for four coal mines.

The case involves a mining practice in which companies shear off the tops of mountains to gain access to seams of coal. Mining companies and environmental groups have been battling in court over where the waste material is dumped and the effects of this type of mining on streams and rivers.

The case has been watched closely by producers in the region, such as Massey Energy Co., that rely on mountaintop removal for some of their output.

Friday's ruling reverses the injunction against four Army Corps of Engineers permits for subsidiaries of Massey Energy. Judge Chambers' 2007 ruling had effectively tied up several additional permit applications from coal producers.

The court's ruling confirmed the Corps of Engineers' authority to decide on the permits needed to dump the materials. The Corps' job is to balance both the Clean Water Act and other federal rules requiring a balance between the environment and the nation's need for energy.

"The Corps is attempting to harmonize the two statutes' goals: ensuring that mining operations can proceed while maintaining the highest level of water quality possible outside of the mining area," wrote Judge Roger Gregory in the majority opinion.

The fight over the future of coal, which provides about half the electricity in the U.S., has intensified in recent months. Many states are reconsidering building new coal-fired plants, given concern about the environmental impacts of mining and burning coal. That's one reason Congress is offering billions of dollars to research ways to make coal-fired plants operate more cleanly, which many environmentalists oppose.

With Friday's court ruling, the battle over coal's future is set to get even hotter.

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Friday, February 13, 2009

To slow climate change, tax carbon

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0213/p09s01-coop.html

In this economy, cap-and-trade is just too risky.

By Nick Schulz

from the February 13, 2009 edition

Washington - Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) of California announced this month she intends to move ahead with legislation designed to lower the emission of greenhouse gases that are linked by many scientists to climate change. But the approach she's taking is flawed, and the current financial crisis can help us understand why.

The centerpiece of this approach is the creation of a market for trading carbon emission credits. These credits would be either distributed free of charge or auctioned to major emitters of greenhouse gases. The firms could then buy and sell permits under federally mandated emissions caps. If a company is able to cut emissions, it can sell excess credits for a profit. If it needs to emit more, it can buy permits on the market from other firms.

"Cap and trade," as it is called, is advocated by several policymakers, industry leaders, and activists who want to fight global warming. But it's based on the trade of highly volatile financial instruments: risky at best.

The better approach to climate change? A direct tax placed on emissions of greenhouse gases. The tax would create a market price for carbon emissions and lead to emissions reductions or new technologies that cut greenhouse gases. This is an approach favored by many economists as the financially sensible way to go. And it is getting a closer look by some industry professionals and lawmakers.

At first blush, it might seem crazy to advocate a tax increase during a major recession. But there are several virtues of a tax on carbon emissions relative to a cap-and-trade program.

For starters, the country already has a mechanism in place to deal with taxes. Tax collection is something the government has abundant experience with. A carbon trading scheme, on the other hand, requires the creation of elaborate new markets, institutions, and regulations to oversee and enforce it.

Another relative advantage of the tax is its flexibility. It is easier to adjust the tax to adapt to changing economic, scientific, or other circumstances. If the tax is too low to be effective, it can be raised easily. If it is too burdensome it can be relaxed temporarily.

In contrast, a cap-and-trade program creates emissions permits that provide substantial economic value to firms and industries. These assets limit the program's flexibility once under way, since market actors then have an interest in maintaining the status quo to preserve the value of the assets.

What's more, they can be a recipe for trouble. As my American Enterprise Institute colleagues Ken Green, Steve Hayward, and Kevin Hassett pointed out two years ago, "sudden changes in economic conditions could lead to significant price volatility in a cap-and-trade program that would be less likely under a carbon-tax regime."

Recent experience bears this out. Europe has in place a cap-and-trade program that today looks a little like the American mortgage-backed securities market – it's a total mess. The price of carbon recently fell – plummeting from over $30 to around $12 per ton – as European firms unloaded their permits on the market in an effort to shore up deteriorating balance sheets during the credit crunch.

It is this shaky experience with cap-and-trade that might explain an unlikely advocate of a carbon tax. Earlier this year, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson pointed in a speech to the problems with Europe's cap-and-trade program – such as the program's volatility and lack of transparency – as reasons he prefers a carbon tax.

That said, new taxes are a tough sell in Washington, which helps explain the current preference for a cap-and-trade scheme.

Despite this, there are ways to make a carbon tax more politically appealing. The first is to insist that it be "revenue neutral." This means that any revenues collected from the tax are used to reduce taxes elsewhere, such as payroll taxes.

The advantage of this approach is that it places a burden on something that is believed by many to be undesirable (greenhouse-gas emissions) while relieving a burden on something that is desirable (work).

Another selling point is that the tax can justify the removal of an assortment of burdensome and costly regulations such as CAFE standards for cars. These regulations become largely redundant in an era of carbon taxes.

But it may be that a carbon tax doesn't need an elaborate sales pitch today when the alternative is trading carbon permits. The nation's recent experience with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the mortgage-backed securities market should prompt Congress to think twice when a member proposes the creation of a highly politicized market for innovative financial instruments, no matter how well intentioned the program may be.

• Nick Schulz is the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and editor of The American.

WSJ: Next Challenge on Stimulus: Spending All That Money

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123448815417580333.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Need a Real Sponsor here

FEBRUARY 13, 2009

By STEPHEN POWER and NEIL KING JR.

Minnesota's Sage Electrochromics Inc. has been ready for months to move on just the sort of project the Obama administration hopes will bolster the U.S. economy: a $65 million factory that would make energy-saving windows and generate 250 new jobs.

So what's holding it up? The Energy Department, whose fledgling loan-guarantee office has yet to approve a single project, including the proposed Sage glass factory, since the loan program launched in early 2007.

President Barack Obama plans to rely heavily on agencies like the Energy Department to approve contracts and issue loan guarantees and grants at a record clip in the $789 billion stimulus plan.

But there are signs that parts of the federal bureaucracy will need an overhaul to handle the huge workload heading their way. Such worries are apparent at the Energy Department, which will play a key role in Mr. Obama's bid to revive the economy and wean the country off oil.

View Full Image

Associated Press

Energy Secretary Steven Chu, with President Barack Obama, says he plans to speed up spending at the DOE.

The stimulus bill nearing a final vote in Congress could pump as much as $170 billion into projects such as highways, Internet broadband and public-housing repairs. Of that, about a quarter -- or some $40 billion -- could go to the Energy Department. The agency would be under the gun to swiftly hand out money to projects that would modernize the electric grid, build electric cars and make homes and buildings more energy efficient.

The new energy secretary, Steven Chu, has barely moved into his office overlooking the Smithsonian Castle. He says he'll have to transform how parts of his agency work if the president's stimulus plan is to succeed.

"We've got to do it," Mr. Chu said in an interview. "Otherwise it's just going to be a bust."

Other agencies face steep challenges, too. An obscure Commerce Department office with a $19 million budget and fewer than 20 grant officers could end up in charge of $7 billion in grants to expand Internet access in rural areas. A Congressional Budget Office report said it could take eight years for those grants to be issued because the amount of money would "far exceed" the agency's traditional budget and require the deployment of technology that is "not widely available today."

The spending demands could prove particularly taxing at the DOE. The Energy Department has had limited experience pulling off big, transformative energy projects. Most of the department's $25 billion budget goes toward maintaining the nation's nuclear stockpile, cleaning up former weapons plants, and doing basic scientific research.

"DOE is going to have to dramatically change how it does business if it hopes to push all this money out the door," says Karen Harbert, a former senior Energy Department official who now directs the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's lobbying efforts on energy issues. "They are going to need more people, more oversight and more freedom to waive regulations."

History of Delays

The department has a history of delays and of letting costs spiral. It has missed so many deadlines for setting energy-efficiency standards for appliances, for example, that Mr. Obama last week ordered the agency to get it done by August this year. The approval process for guaranteeing loans to energy projects, meanwhile, has dragged on for roughly two years and counting. And last month, the Government Accountability Office cited the agency's "inadequate management and oversight of its contractors" when it put the department on its list of agencies at "high risk" for waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement.

Where the Money Goes

Selected programs from the $789.2 billion bill

How the Stimulus Plans Differed

Compare the House and Senate versions of the stimulus legislation.

Final Text of the Agreement

Discuss

Video

Gregory Friedman, the DOE's inspector general, whose office acts as the agency's in-house watchdog, knows the department's weak spots well after holding the position for more than a decade. The House version of the stimulus bill before Congress gives Mr. Friedman's office $15 million to track how all the new money coming into the DOE will be spent.

"Forty billion dollars is a huge amount of money," says Mr. Friedman of the DOE's potential windfall. "Absorbing the money, making sure it's spent appropriately and gets into the hands of the right recipients...are going to be significant challenges."

A Four-Week Window

Mr. Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose last job was running the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, says one of his first priorities at the DOE is getting projects that are already in the pipeline, like the Sage glass factory, up and running. To agency employees who say such projects need months of additional consideration, "we're saying, 'Tell us what you need to do in order to get them [decided] in four weeks,'" Mr. Chu says.

Sage and more than a dozen other companies have so far labored for more than two years to win loan guarantees through a program authorized by Congress in 2005. Wary of financing projects that might default, the Bush administration took another two years to adopt regulations governing the program. Congress eventually authorized the DOE to issue $42.5 billion in loan guarantees for ventures that many lenders would otherwise consider too risky.

The program is now seen as a test of the department's ability to speed up projects that could both create jobs and help steer the country away from a reliance on oil. But the experience of some of the companies still awaiting their loan guarantees raises questions about whether the DOE will be able to radically change its ways fast enough.

Sage Electrochromics makes windows that can get darker or lighter on command, making rooms easier to cool in summer or warmer in winter. Sage first approached the Energy Department in late 2006 about securing a loan guarantee that would allow the company to build its first commercial-scale glass factory about 40 miles south of the Twin Cities in Minnesota.

In October 2007, Sage was one of 16 companies that won initial approval. The company, which is seeking a $65 million loan guarantee, is now awaiting a ruling from the DOE on whether it will have to pay a fee for the service. After that comes a due-diligence review that will require a team of lawyers, engineers and market researchers, and could cost up to $1 million, according to Sage estimates.

"I'm guessing that we will have the money by the end of the year at the earliest," says Mike Kennedy, Sage's chief financial officer. "There has to be a way to do this faster."

In Massachusetts, Beacon Power Co. has stood in line for 25 months to win approval for a $50 million loan guarantee that would let the company break ground on an electricity-storage plant about 30 miles southeast of Albany, N.Y. The plant would absorb power and feed it back onto the grid when the supply drops, a function that traditional power plants do much less efficiently.

The vetting has been so thorough, says Beacon spokesman Gene Smith, that the company to date has supplied the Energy Department with 96 documents, which together fill six thick, three-ring binders. One of the documents is a draft 87-page environmental-impact study for the proposed two-acre site. That study required Beacon to hire archaeologists to scour the site for signs of prehistoric remains. The team found a mound of debris from a century ago that was deemed of no historic value.

David Frantz, who directs the DOE's loan-guarantee program, said he couldn't comment on specific applications, but said the agency is moving to "significantly shorten the cycle time from application to loan guarantee to ensure good projects get funded quickly."

On Thursday, Andy Karsner, assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy under President George W. Bush, told a Senate panel that a combination of "bureaucratic dysfunction," "organizational intransigence," and "institutional barriers" had contributed to the agency's "painfully slow" progress on loan-guarantee applications in recent years.

An Earful About Delays

The Energy Department has missed deadlines and misjudged the costs of projects before. Shortly before Mr. Obama took office, the agency halted contract talks on more than $2 billion worth of energy-efficiency projects at federal buildings, after realizing belatedly that the projects' costs would exceed the limits the department had set for them. An Energy Department spokesman said the agency didn't "adequately keep track of the value of projects in the pipeline," but that most of the affected projects were still in their early stages and that the department is working to move them along "with as little disruption or delay as possible."

Mr. Chu has heard an earful about such delays. He says when it comes to loan guarantees, the level of documentation the agency requires from companies "may be too much." He says he's talking to officials at other agencies that he says have "a better track record" of getting financial aid to companies quickly. Some of those agencies' employees could be temporarily reassigned to the DOE to help it mete out funds.

Speeding Up the Process

His aides are also pressing the agency's lawyers and loan-guarantee managers to identify ways to speed up the process. The agency's legal department, says Mr. Chu, has been "very conservative," in waiting to vet loan-guarantee applications until after the deadline for submissions has passed, rather than "triaging" them on a "rolling" basis.

David Hill, who was the Energy Department's general counsel under President Bush, says there are reasons for the DOE to tread carefully in funding alternative-energy projects. During the 1970s, he says, the DOE made multiple loan guarantees to support the development of synthetic fuels and geothermal power, only to see many of those projects default and the projects' sponsors abandon them.

"We have to be careful to not make the same mistakes that we made before," Mr. Hill says.

Business groups like the Chamber of Commerce have called for expediting federal environmental reviews to help speed spending. Otherwise, they say, many stimulus-funded projects will be delayed for years. Environmental groups object to such proposals. "The way to ensure stimulus money is spent quickly is to fund the right initiatives, not waive solid laws," says Erin Allweis, a spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The frenzy of activity is unfolding as government watchdogs are warning the Energy Department not to lose sight of its traditional duties. A report in December by the agency's inspector general, Mr. Friedman, said the department still faces a "monumental task" in cleaning up the more than 1.5 million cubic meters of solid radioactive waste and 88 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste left over from more than 50 years of nuclear defense and energy research work across the country.

Another challenge: making sure money designated for states gets funneled through quickly to the people it's meant to help. A good chunk of the DOE stimulus money, around $5 billion, will flow in the form of grants to states for programs to supply insulation for homes in low-income neighborhoods. There, too, states are scrambling to prepare to handle unprecedented sums of money. Massachusetts, which is farther along than most states in weatherizing homes, expects an injection of upwards of $161 million into a program that last year spent $14 million.

Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey Republican who sits on a House panel that controls the DOE's budget, worries that the scale of the stimulus will throw the agency off track. "You have a huge policy shift here of moving a bureaucracy that's been focused on research and development to being a manager of a massive amount of money," he says, calling it, "a prescription for abuse and waste."

Write to Stephen Power at stephen.power@wsj.com and Neil King Jr. at neil.king@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A1

West Virginia: Direct Action star hosts Summer campaign to oppose Mt. Top Removal

http://forestpolicy.posterous.com/west-virginia-direct-action-st

The arrival of such a famous environmental activist went unnoticed by
most media and townspeople. That changed Feb. 3, when Roselle and 12
others chained themselves to a Massey Energy Corp. bulldozer at a mine
site on Coal River Mountain in Raleigh County. He was detained and
cited, but not arrested, in his first direct action in West Virginia.
His newest group, Climate Ground Zero, is small. Only he and a few
nuclear members moved to town. But that's how it's always been for his
grassroots efforts. His disobedience may be nonviolent, but it's
unlawful all the same. Roselle has been arrested about 40 times for
civil disobedience actions, such as trespassing and chaining himself
to equipment.

Final formatting of post available at http://forestpolicyresearch.org

Get full text; support writer, producer of the words:
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Just a few months ago, three little coal company houses stood along
the Coal River, gutted and near the end of their lives. Now, those
three little homes are considered the Appalachian base for Climate
Ground Zero and Coal River Wind. Their new tenant, 54-year-old
national environmentalist Mike Roselle, is setting up shop to get
ready for a long summer of disobedience in the coalfields. Earth
First!, Roselle described it as "a painfully small group." One of the
group's first actions featured him and his roommate headed from
California to Oregon in 1982, where logging had started in a
wilderness area. He said Earth First!'s first meeting had about 40
people in attendance and then 20 at the second. At their first action,
about eight people came and four were arrested. In 12 separate actions
from April to July of that year, about 85 people were arrested. At
that time, he said, none of the more traditional conservation groups
would go in with Earth First! members on the 14-mile hike up a couple
thousand feet of vertical elevation to the protest site. For some
Earth First! activists, it was their first time in the state. It was
the first time direct action and civil disobedience had been used in
an organized long-term campaign, Roselle said. "So that campaign
resulted in probably a couple 100,000 acres of old-growth (forest)
being protected, and from then Earth First! grew into a national
organization," he said. In larger campaigns, he has had up to 10,000
activists in attendance, with celebrities such as Bonnie Raitt and Don
Henley there to help, Roselle said.
http://wowktv.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=52024

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Roselle was one of 13 activists detained and cited for trespassing
after they chained themselves to a bulldozer Feb. 3 at a Massey Energy
Corp. mine site. Protests and citations came in two waves, at 9 a.m.
and 1 p.m., with five activists involved in the first round and eight
in the second. A videographer also was arrested during the first
protest. About 50 people from West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee
gathered at the Coal River Mountain Watch headquarters by noon that
day, according to Lorelei Scarbro, a Coal River Mountain Watch
community organizer on the Coal River Project. Charles Suggs, with
environmental groups Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice Summer,
said, "We won't stop until they do. There is a wind farm going on that
mountain or some other healthy, safe, clean form of economic
activity." The first five activists cited were members of Climate
Ground Zero and Mountain Justice Summer, including Roselle. He said he
previously has been involved with Greenpeace and Earth First! and
moved to West Virginia in July to begin work on the mountaintop
removal issue. He's been coming to West Virginia for five years but
said he's here for the duration of this battle. He and others made the
long hike to get around a guard at the front gate. "Trespassing is
certainly a serious offense, but destroying a mountain is more
serious," Roselle said.

Get full text; support writer, producer of the
words:http://www.statejournal.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=51398

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Cal PUBLIC Transit Association on State Budget: Armageddon Is Here

http://la.streetsblog.org/2009/02/13/cal-transit-association-on-state-budget-armageddon-is-here/

by Damien Newton on February 13, 2009

Yesterday, transit advocates from around the state strove to grapple with the new reality that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state legislature's "compromise" on the state budget completely abolished the State Transit Assistance (STA) and the $536 million that it dedicated to subsidizing transit operations.

There are multiple villains in this story, but the blackest hat is reserved for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. While the governor was out-in-front supporting a glitzy high speed rail line to connect San Francisco to San Diego last November; this budget will cause major fare hikes and service reductions from around the state. As Joshua Shaw, executive director of the California Transit Association notes in a press release:

We will see fare increases. We will see service cuts. We will see layoffs. I can say that with certainty simply because we've already seen those things happening even before the state apparently decided to abandon its responsibility to fund public transportation.

Of course, the Governor couldn't slash transit funds without the support of the state legislature. While the League of California Environmental Voters, Environmental Defense and the National Resources Defense Council placed the blame at the feet of a "radical minority" of Republicans who used the state's super-majority requirement for any budget to effectively stall democratic efforts, other transit groups blamed the Democratic majority for not not holding firm on protecting the environment.

In the short term, readers should call their legislators and demand that transit funding be restored to the budget. In the long term, the environmental groups want to change the super-majority law so that a small group of legislators can't hijack the entire budget process.

So what does this mean locally? While Metro promised that there would be no fare hikes in the next fiscal year and their proposed service adjustments and cuts are modest compared to previous years; their current budget is balanced assuming that the agency would receive $227 million in operating assistance from the STA. Last year, the MTA proposed cuts to 20 service lines in a move that was universally panned by advocates, the local press, and even Mayor Villaraigosa as "draconian." Those cuts were proposed to close a $100 million dollar funding gap, less than half of what Metro will lose if the state eliminates the STA as currently planned. While the Mayor and the rest of the Metro Board were able to hold off on the service cuts last year, the serious cuts the proposed cuts could seem small compared to what is coming.

In short, advocates rallying to save proposed cuts on lines such as Northeast LA's "Line to Everywhere," are facing a much steeper hill today than they were earlier in the week. While the full scope of how Metro will deal with a nearly quarter billion hole in its operations budget isn't yet known, it's almost certain that the cuts they proposed before Schwarzenegger's irresponsible budgetdeal will be made and that more cuts could be coming.

HUF POST: What the World Needs Now: a Green Jon Stewart.

February 13, 2009

Waylon Lewis

Posted February 12, 2009 | 07:04 PM (EST)

What the World Needs Now: a Green Jon Stewart.

On December 31st, the last ecopaper-printed issue of my eco-magazine, elephant journal, sold off the last newstands in Whole Foods and Pharmacies, etc., around the US of A. A few weeks later, Plenty, the leading 'green' magazine, went kaput. And then there was one.

One print mag that can take it into the endzone: Ben Goldhirsch's GOOD. Of course, plenty of magazines are great. But few are (mission-) driven to spread the green, lifestyle, social activism gospel in a hip, fun, not-half-as-holy-as-thou manner. So while little elephantjournal.com marches on, GOOD is already in a position--with its videos, magazine, daily blog, deep pockets and connections to put together a real nightly talk show on a real, old-fashioned TV channel.

A mainstream talk show would reach millions of Americans each night--and in so doing, do for sustainability, organics, fair-trade, social activism, conscious consumerism, yoga and non-new-agey spirituality etc. what Jon Stewart has done for politics: make it accessible to those who thought they didn't give a damn.

GOOD magazine's latest video series is stylish, and full of vital info re: what's going on with our world. Too bad they're also just on YouTube, where the sum total of all GOOD's videos, ever, might equal half of the viewership of one night of Oprah, Jon Stewart, Jay Leno, Rick Mercer, Jimmy Kimmel, Conan, Moyers, Rose, Letterman or Ferguson. Why can't the charming, smart, ambitious zillionaire Mr. Do-Goodhirsch make a few calls to a few bigwigs who want to corner the emerging green/LOHAS market...and get a green/political/social activism talk show on Planet Green or some hungry cable channel? Or why can't Arianna Huffington, with her kajillions of views each day, feature a daily video talk show in a corner of her home page? Isn't video a major driver of internet traffic--and isn't daily, original video content the one thing Huffington Post isn't acing, thus far?

Want to change the world? Media, as Lester Brown said in our recent interview, is the key. Not 'a' key. 'The.'

Won't someone create a fun, yet fundamentally serious show that can get the good word out re LOHAS [the female-driven demographic described as Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability]? Do Stewart and Oprah have to do all the heavy lifting around here? God knows we need it, and we're running out of time.

Below is the latest vid from GOOD--stylish, cool, full of good info, but slightly boring if you have a severe case of ADHD (as does most of the iPhone/Blackberry/IM'ed US). Raking in say 20- to 40,000 views (the average GOOD video), GOOD's vids won't change our cultural dialogue compared with great guests and music on a fun talk show, five nights a week. Yeah, we here at elephantjournal.com are trying, and having fun doing so, but we don't even have a publicist or agent, let alone the ability to snap our fingers and make a big-platform talk show rise out of our 5280-elevation thin air.

So it's up to you, Ben. Arianna. Redford. Simran. Sara. Olivia. SRO. Glatzer. Graham. Step forward--our remotes will follow.

Long-promised cellulosic ethanol is in modest production, but hurdles remain.

Mark Stowers, research and development director of POET, America's largest ethanol producer, says cellulosic ethanol technology is ready for prime time.

(Mark Clayton)

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The 'holy grail' of biofuels now in sight

http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2009/02/13/the-%E2%80%98holy-grail%E2%80%99-of-biofuels-now-in-sight/

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor/ February 13, 2009 edition

Scotland, S.D.

With one foot planted in a pile of corn cobs, Mark Stowers explains how agricultural waste, transformed into ethanol, will turbocharge the US economy, boost its energy security, and help save the planet, too.

This holy grail of biofuels, called cellulosic ethanol, has been "five years from commercialization" for so long that even Dr. Stowers admits it's become a joke.

But now the research director for POET, the nation's largest ethanolmaker, based in Sioux Falls, S.D., says that despite bad economic news and major obstacles, cellulosic's time is near. Other scientists agree.

Corn-based ethanol, which many critics argue does not do enough to slow climate change, is nearing US production limits. In Washington, cellulosic ethanol is gaining political traction. And cellulosic technology seems ready for prime time – at last.

'Cellulosic ethanol is real'

The proof, Stowers says, lies inside a nearby windowless, high-roofed single-story metal building. Filled with a maze of pipes and vats, this $8 million test facility is a miniature cellulosic ethanol plant that pumps out 20,000 gallons a year of nearly clear alcohol extracted from cobs like the ones beneath his feet.

"This pilot plant shows cellulosic ethanol is real – that the technology is here," Stowers says. "Ultimately, cellulosic will allow us to make significant inroads to replacing oil for our nation's gasoline needs."

The 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) calls for boosting production of biofuels to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022 – about 15 billion gallons of it corn ethanol, the rest cellulosic. (By contrast, the US produced about 9 billion gallons of corn ethanol last year.) That would replace about one-fifth of the nation's gasoline needs without displacing current crops.

But looking forward, biofuels could play a far larger role. By 2030, biofuels may reach 60 billion gallons, according to a new report released Feb. 10 by Sandia National Laboratory. That would require 480 million tons of biomass, including 215 million tons of dedicated energy crops like switchgrass. Such fuel crops would require 48 million acres of what is now pasture or idle land, the report says.

Such a shift would slash annual US tailpipe carbon dioxide emissions by 260 million tons a year – about equal to the emissions from 45 coal-fired power plants. Cellulosic ethanol feedstock crops would require little or no irrigation, a big advantage over corn. The cost: about $250 billion, the same or less than that of boosting US oil production by the same amount.

One-third of nation's needs by 2030?

With a few key technology improvements, the United States could do even better, creating up to 90 billion gallons of ethanol by 2030, enough to meet one-third of the nation's transportation fuel needs, Sandia found. In that scenario, about 75 billion gallons would be cellulosic fuel. Just 15 billion gallons a year would come from corn, the report said.

Getting there will be a huge challenge. The handful of pilot cellulosic plants in the US produce maybe 1 million gallons a year. Production would have to be ramped up a thousandfold to meet the 2013 federal goal of 1 billion gallons. That seems unlikely, given the economy's tailspin.

Of the six commercial-scale cellulosic biofuel plants funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE), two have bowed out. Another smaller-scale project supported by DOE, a partnership between Lignol Energy of Vancouver and Calgary-based Suncor, withdrew Feb. 9.

Not on track at the moment

As of right now, "we're not on track" to produce 1 billion gallons of biofuel annually by 2013, says Thomas Foust, biomass technology manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. "Obviously, the credit crunch and recession have put dampers on and delayed commercial plants. But a number of companies are still pursuing it very vigorously. We're doing the same."

Next year, the POET company will begin construction of its first 25-million-gallon commercial-scale cellulosic plant dubbed "Liberty" in Emmetsburg, Iowa, Stowers says.

The DOE is paying for 40 percent of the $200 million facility, expected to open in 2011. After that, POET plans to "bolt on" similar corn-cob-munching cellulosic factories at its 26 conventional corn-based ethanol production facilities, he says.

Not to be outdone, Range Fuels, a Broomfield, Colo., company, last month won an $80 million loan guarantee from the US Department of Agriculture for the nation's first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant, now under construction in Soperton, Ga. It aims to begin production next year.

'Blend wall' may crimp ethanol

To succeed, cellulosic will have to buck not only low oil prices, the credit crunch, and recession, but also uncertain demand – thanks to the "blend wall."

The RFS today requires refiners to blend into gasoline about 14 billion gallons of ethanol – about 10 percent of US gasoline consumption. But with ethanol production capacity near that level now, cellulosic producers may not find many buyers – unless the national blend mandate for ethanol is raised to 15 percent or higher, which is what ethanol producers and farmers would like.

"The blend wall has a huge potential impact on cellulosic ethanol development," Foust says. "The No. 1 issue is a stagnant economy. But next to that, the issue that won't resolve itself is the blend wall."

Some environmental groups worry that this means traditional corn-based ethanol will benefit more than environmentally friendly cellulosic. Others say older vehicles' emissions systems will be damaged by a higher percentage of alcohol in fuel, thus worsening air pollution.

Low oil prices hurt ethanol

"We can't afford to play fast and loose with Clean Air Act protections," says Nathanael Greene, senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental activist group.

Another huge hurdle is cost-competitiveness. Cellulosic ethanol requires a more complex process that uses costly enzymes. At present, a gallon of cellulosic ethanol costs about $2.25 a gallon to produce: That's 40 to 50 cents more than corn ethanol and 75 cents more than gasoline. But under Sandia's projections, cellulosic ethanol's retail cost could fall to just $1.72 a gallon without any incentives or taxes and still be competitive with gasoline – if oil costs $90 per barrel.

But with a barrel of crude now selling for roughly $40, it's difficult for cellulosic or even corn ethanol to compete. Still, POET, Foust, and others are looking ahead to when the global economy stabilizes and oil bounces back to around $90 a barrel.

Economy's long shadow hurts, too

Recession and the credit crunch are the deepest shadows over cellulosic development, Foust says. Of the 20 or so investment banks that financed billions in corn-ethanol development over the past decade, only five are still in business. And with oil cheap and ethanol demand weak, investor appetite for more ethanol production is tepid.

That may change. The new stimulus bill has $500 million allocated for the development of "leading edge biofuels."

Besides economics, critical environmental concerns remain. Key among them: Which method is the most environmentally friendly?

Environmentalists like Mr. Greene aren't eager to support cellulosic ethanol unless it can be proved that the impact from its development – including US and EU policies – is a clear plus for the environment.

Larger climate impact must be weighed

By law, "advanced biofuels" like cellulosic ethanol must be certified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as producing at least 60 percent less greenhouse gas than gasoline does. Mr. Stowers and others are optimistic that that's a slam-dunk.

But what about the climatic impact of biofuels as the result of crop shifts and land-use change worldwide? What would be the impact if farmers plow under marginal grasslands and forests to grow switchgrass? How much agricultural waste can be collected from farm fields before the result is more erosion?

The land-use question over corn-based ethanol has fired debate since last summer, when one study found diversion of US corn production for fuel had cut US corn exports. That, in turn, caused developing nations to plant more corn, a shift that may have negated the advantage of corn ethanol over gasoline in terms of its overall impact on global warming.

Now the same debate is likely to erupt for cellulosic ethanol, not only for its potential effect on food prices but also its net impact on climate.

Food crops vs. fuel crops

"One of the points often made in favor of cellulosic ethanols," says Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental activist group, "is that the feedstocks for it, like switchgrass, would be grown on marginal land. But if it is that profitable on marginal land, imagine how profitable it would be on prime crop land. There's nothing to stop it from happening."

The EPA, charged with evaluating the carbon footprint of cellulosic ethanol to determine if it meets the 60 percent threshold, has done a preliminary land-use impact evaluation. But those tentative results haven't been released because the methodology is being refined, experts say.

"Indirect land-use impacts is a new analysis area that's very tough, from a modeling and data point of view," says Wallace Tyner, professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. "But we're making progress. Within the next year we are going to narrow the bounds considerably."

Getting ethanol feedstock right is key

All of this leaves NRDC's Greene wanting government to take a slower, closer look at potential cellulosic feedstocks like switchgrass, miscanthus, poplar, and other crops in order to get federal policy toward cellulosic right from the start.

"The refining technology is obviously a challenge that will succumb to American innovation," he says. "But getting the feedstock right is key. If we mow down corn to put in switchgrass, well, you've got that food versus fuel trade-off again."

Harvesting agriculture "wastes" for biofuels also raises critical questions and needs closer analysis. POET, for instance, gets high marks from Greene for its careful evaluation of the impact of removing corn cobs from farm fields, which the company and others say appears to deduct only about 2 to 3 percent of the nutrients.

Even so, it turns out most corn stover – which is everything but the corn kernel (stalk, leaves, and cobs) – is badly needed for soil enrichment and to prevent erosion.

Crop waste helps fields, too

"A portion of the [corn] stover can be made available as feedstock for bioenergy purposes," say Douglas Karlen, research leader for soil and water quality at the National Soil Tilth Laboratory in Ames, Iowa.

Harvesters would have to be outfitted with software to gauge exactly how much corn stover was taken from the field, he says.

"There's not a blanket or uniform amount," Dr. Karlen says. "It has to vary not only by farm, but within an individual field. The amount taken has to vary because the land varies."

( More stories )

RELEASE: STRIKE TO CUT WAR FUND PEACE $200B FAST ENDED IN PREPARATION FOR NEXT CAMPAIGN

February 13, 2009 Washington DC. Start Loving announced the conclusion of a fast begun December 19th to redirect tax payer funds from war making to peace building (NewsBlaze Jan. 3, 2009). Start Loving, a long time peace and social justice activist, stated, "I'm asked all the time if hunger strikes make a difference? I believe every action makes a difference. Only the direction and degree are in question. Now would Barney Frank be taking as courageous a stand on cutting the military budget had his office not witnessed the Hunger Strike and my Occupation on Capitol Hill these last two months, ("Cut the Military Budget,," Barney Frank, The Nation 2/13/09)? That I'll never know."

Diane Wilson, another activist who joined the hunger strike weeks later from her home in Texas after Start loving began the strike and round the clock occupation of Capital Hill on December 19, said, "Our action is informed by what Gandhi called for, 'Be the change you wish to see.' We cannot expect courageous action from others unless we citizens live it ourselves. This especially applies to Congress"

On day 35 of the Hunger Strike and after many positive moves by the Obama administration came into view, Wilson and Loving went into "hold" mode - half rations. Today, Start said he was concluding the campaign because Congress, the target audience, was going home for a week and also positive moves continue come from the Obama administration, and from many Democrats on the Hill.

Loving stated, "With the Congress away we will use the time to regain strength for the next leg of the battle. I expect, however, to spend many more months on the Hill lobbying for sanity. With the economy in shambles, it is insane for the US to spend $1 trillion on war-making. Just yesterday, Russia announced they are cutting their $45 billion budget by 15% due to their financial crisis. We should be doing the same. Now."

<<<Http://HomeearthSecurity.blogspot.com

Your brother in Peace-Building,

Start Loving ... WAGE LOVE OR DIE (NO 3RD OPTION ANY LONGER EXISTS).
GANDHI: "BE THE [COURAGEOUS LEADERSHIP] YOU WISH TO SEE."
Http://AmericasBleedingWars.blogspot.com

Http://Start-Loving.blogspot.com
Http://youtube.com/StartLoving1