by Bill McKibben for TomDispatch, part of the Guardian Comment Network

If we could see the world with a particularly illuminating set of spectacles, one of its most prominent features at the moment would be a giant carbon bubble, whose bursting someday will make the housing bubble of 2007 look like a lark. As yet – as we shall see – it's unfortunately largely invisible to us.

In compensation, though, we have some truly beautiful images made possible by new technology. Last month, for instance, Nasa updated the most iconic photograph in our civilization's gallery: "Blue Marble", originally taken from Apollo 17 in 1972. The spectacular new high-def image shows a picture of the Americas on 4 January, a good day for snapping photos because there weren't many clouds.

It was also a good day because of the striking way it could demonstrate to us just how much the planet has changed in 40 years. As Jeff Masters, the web's most widely read meteorologist, explains:

"The US and Canada are virtually snow-free and cloud-free, which is extremely rare for a January day. The lack of snow in the mountains of the western US is particularly unusual. I doubt one could find a January day this cloud-free with so little snow on the ground throughout the entire satellite record, going back to the early 1960s."

In fact, it's likely that the week that photo was taken will prove "the driest first week in recorded US history". Indeed, it followed on 2011, which showed the greatest weather extremes in our history – 56% of the country was either in drought or flood, which was no surprise since "climate change science predicts wet areas will tend to get wetter and dry areas will tend to get drier." Indeed, the nation suffered 14 weather disasters, each causing $1bn or more in damage last year. (The old record was nine.) Masters again: "Watching the weather over the past two years has been like watching a famous baseball hitter on steroids."

In the face of such data – statistics that you can duplicate for almost every region of the planet – you'd think we'd already be in an all-out effort to do something about climate change. Instead, we're witnessing an all-out effort to … deny there's a problem.

Our GOP presidential candidates are working hard to make sure no one thinks they'd appease chemistry and physics. At the last Republican debate in Florida, Rick Santorum insisted that he should be the nominee because he'd caught on earlier than Newt or Mitt to the global warming "hoax".

Most of the media pays remarkably little attention to what's happening. Coverage of global warming has dipped 40% over the last two years. When, say, there's a rare outbreak of January tornadoes, TV anchors politely discuss "extreme weather," but climate change is the disaster that dare not speak its name.

And when they do break their silence, some of our elite organs are happy to indulge in outright denial. Last month, for instance, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by "16 scientists and engineers" headlined "No Need to Panic About Global Warming". The article was easily debunked. It was nothing but a mash-up of long-since-disproved arguments by people who turned out mostly not to be climate scientists at all, quoting other scientists who immediately said their actual work showed just the opposite.

It's no secret where this denialism comes from: the fossil fuel industry pays for it. (Of the 16 authors of the Journal article, for instance, five had had ties to Exxon.) Writers from Ross Gelbspan to Naomi Oreskes have made this case with such overwhelming power that no one even really tries denying it any more. The open question is why the industry persists in denial in the face of an endless body of fact showing climate change is the greatest danger we've ever faced.

Why doesn't it fold, the way the tobacco industry eventually did? Why doesn't it invest its riches in things like solar panels and so profit handsomely from the next generation of energy?

The answer is more interesting than you might think.

Part of it's simple enough: the giant energy companies are making so much money right now that they can't stop gorging themselves. ExxonMobil, year after year, pulls in more money than any company in history. Chevron's not far behind. Everyone in the business is swimming in money.

Still, they could theoretically invest all that cash in new clean technology or research and development for the same. As it happens, though, they've got a deeper problem, one that's become clear only in the last few years. Put briefly: their value is largely based on fossil-fuel reserves that won't be burned if we ever take global warming seriously.

When I talked about a carbon bubble at the beginning of this essay, this is what I meant. Here are some of the relevant numbers, courtesy of the Capital Institute: we're already seeing widespread climate disruption, but if we want to avoid utter, civilization-shaking disaster, many scientists have pointed to a two-degree rise in global temperatures as the most we could possibly deal with.

If we spew 565 gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere, we'll quite possibly go right past that reddest of red lines. But the oil companies, private and state-owned, have current reserves on the books equivalent to 2,795 gigatons – five times more than we can ever safely burn. It has to stay in the ground.

Put another way, in ecological terms, it would be extremely prudent to write off $20tn-worth of those reserves. In economic terms, of course, it would be a disaster, first and foremost for shareholders and executives of companies like ExxonMobil (and people in places like Venezuela).

If you run an oil company, this sort of write-off is the disastrous future staring you in the face as soon as climate change is taken as seriously as it should be, and that's far scarier than drought and flood. It's why you'll do anything – including fund an endless campaigns of lies – to avoid coming to terms with its reality. So, instead, we simply charge ahead. To take just one example, last month, the boss of the US Chamber of Commerce, Thomas Donohue, called for burning all the country's newly discovered coal, gas, and oil – believed to be 1,800 gigatons-worth of carbon from our nation alone.

What he and the rest of the energy-industrial elite are denying, in other words, is that the business models at the center of our economy are in the deepest possible conflict with physics and chemistry. The carbon bubble that looms over our world needs to be deflated soon. As with our fiscal crisis, failure to do so will cause enormous pain – pain, in fact, almost beyond imagining. After all, if you think banks are too big to fail, consider the climate as a whole and imagine the nature of the bailout that would face us when that bubble finally bursts.

Unfortunately, it won't burst by itself – not in time, anyway. The fossil-fuel companies, with their heavily-funded denialism and their record campaign contributions, have been able to keep at bay even the tamest efforts at reining in carbon emissions. With each passing day, they're leveraging us deeper into an unpayable carbon debt – and with each passing day, they're raking in unimaginable returns. ExxonMobil last week reported its 2011 profits at $41bn, the second highest of all time. Do you wonder who owns the record? That would be ExxonMobil, in 2008, at $45bn.

Telling the truth about climate change would require pulling away the biggest punchbowl in history, right when the party is in full swing. That's why the fight is so pitched. That's why those of us battling for the future need to raise our game.

And it's why that view from the satellites, however beautiful from a distance, is likely to become ever harder to recognize as our home planet.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Photo: U.S. National Archives, 1974

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In a decision posted on the China central government website on Monday, the Chinese government said all airlines were barred from taking part in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme ETS.L - unless they received government approval to do so.

The Chinese government has both forbid China's airlines from paying a tax on carbon emissions for planes flying in and out of Europe but also forbid the airlines from raising its ticket prices for doing so.

Airlines refusing to participate in the EU airlines emissions scheme face fines or even a potential ban from using European airports.
But negotiators on both sides of the issue believe the situation will not reach that point, whether the issue is mitigated diplomatically or in international court.

“I believe all sides will negotiate again and find a solution,” said Chai Haibo, vice president of the China Air Transport Association. “I can’t imagine that the worst case, such as the EU grounding Chinese flights, could happen.”

The Chinese decision on Monday comes at a particularly critical moment in China-Europe relations with a high level summit scheduled for next week between the two; the main purpose of which is to discuss the possibility of China bailing the EU out of its gripping debt crisis,

Appearing last week in a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said his government was weighing the possibility of an expanded role in the European Financial Stability Fund.

“China is considering greater involvement in resolving Europe’s debt crisis by participating in the European Financial Stability Fund and the European Stability Mechanism,” Premier Wen said, noting the EU was China's biggest trade partner.

Although not on the official agenda for next week's summit, the airline carbon emissions issue will most likely be raised.

The governments of the United States, India and Russia have also voiced opposition to the EU carbon scheme for commercial air travel, as have several global airlines.

Although the new fees technically took effect in January, airlines will not see any actual "bills" until 2013. And even then, those bills are expected to be rather limited at this early stage. It is estimated that 85 percent of air travel will be covered by allowances with the remaining 15 percent of air travel facing an emissions fee.

Photo credit: Some rights reserved by chinaoffseason

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Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Tommy P. Beaudrea announced on Thursday that an environmental assessment found that there would be "no significant environmental or socioeconomic impacts from wind energy development" on the Outer Continental Shelf off the Mid-Atlantic Coast states of Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and Delaware.

“Offshore wind holds incredible potential for our country, and we’re moving full-steam ahead to accelerate the siting, leasing and construction of new projects,” Secretary Salazar said.

The greatest offshore wind energy potential in the U.S. lies off the Atlantic Coast, which holds 1,000 gigawatts of electricity, or one quarter of national demand, according to a 2009 Interior Department report.

“Today’s announcement opens up the ‘sweet spots’ off the mid-Atlantic coast for development of our nation's remarkable offshore wind resource,” said Deputy Secretary of the Interior David J. Hayes.

Facing the expiration of the wind energy Production Tax Credit at the end of 2012, a policy tool that has been crucial for commercial-scale wind energy development in the U.S., the wind industry welcomed Thursday's announcement with open arms.

Calling the announcement a "significant milestone," Denise Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, said developing offshore wind energy "will help us capture a new American manufacturing opportunity and create thousands of new American jobs."

Transmission infrastructure in the Mid-Atlantic could ultimately be provided by the Google-backed Atlantic Wind Connection, an undersea transmission cable stretching from northern New Jersey to southern Virginia. First announced in 2010, the transmission project is currently being reviewed by the Interior Department.

Photo credit: Some rights reserved by Vattenfall

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by Michael Grabell, ProPublica

A common criticism of President Obama's $800 billion stimulus package has been that it failed to produce anything – that while the New Deal built bridges and dams, all the stimulus did was fill some potholes and create temporary jobs.

Don't tell that to Annette Herrera. She was 50 when the auto supplier she worked for in Westland, Mich., closed its factory and moved the work to Mexico. Then, after being unemployed for 2½ years, she got a job in October 2010 with A123 Systems, which had received $250 million in stimulus money to help open a new lithium-ion battery plant in nearby Romulus, Mich.

"The first thing I did was call my husband and tell him, 'You're never going to guess! I got a job!'" Herrera recalled. "And then it was like celebration time."

One success the Obama administration can duly claim is the rebirth of the electric-car industry in the United States. Automakers have unveiled a number of mass-market electric cars, which have seen small but rising sales. Battery and parts manufacturers are building 30 factories, creating thousands of new jobs. A123 has hired 700 workers at Herrera's plant and a second one in nearby Livonia, and plans to hire a couple thousand more people over the next few years.

If it wasn't for the stimulus, the companies say, they would have built these plants overseas.

It was all part of an effort to promote "green" manufacturing and put a million electric cars on the road by 2015.

The question is: Will it last?

Elkhart, Ind., once believed it would. It saw electric vehicles as its salvation after watching its unemployment rate hit 20 percent. Eager to seed a new industry, the county witnessed electric-vehicle ventures sprout out of nowhere as the stimulus took off in 2009.

But by late summer 2011, what had sprouted were weeds. The parking lot of the Think electric-car plant was full of them, some more than a foot high growing from the cracks. Out front were two pickups and a motorcycle.

Hundreds of laid-off factory workers were supposed to have found jobs churning out the Norwegian company's bug-like, plastic-bodied cars, which ran solely on electricity.

Today the Elkhart factory employs two. Its parent company filed for bankruptcy in June. Its largest shareholder and battery maker, Ener1, which received $118 million in stimulus money, did the same last week.

A second life

Electric cars began appearing on California roads in the mid-1990s after state regulators mandated that a certain percentage of automakers' fleets include zero-emissions vehicles.

But within a few years, they were deemed a failure by car companies, which stopped making them and took back those they had leased.

Much had changed in the eight years leading up the stimulus package. The lead-acid and nickel-metal hydride batteries that weighed as much as 1,200 pounds were replaced with lithium-ion batteries that weighed as little as 400 pounds.

In the early 2000s, gas hadn't even passed $2 a gallon. Less than a decade later, it was twice that. Toyota had proven the demand with its long waiting list for the Prius hybrid.

Government policy had changed, too, with a 2007 energy bill that increased fuel-efficiency standards and provided $25 billion in loans for automakers to upgrade their plants.

But until the economic stimulus package was passed in 2009, the manufacture of electric cars and their batteries in the United States was nearly nonexistent.

The United States had only two factories manufacturing less than 2 percent of the world's advanced batteries. Most were made in Korea and Japan. In America, only Tesla manufactured an electric car — which sold for a cool $100,000. Across the entire country, there were a mere 500 electric charging stations.

But as the stimulus kicked in, there was suddenly no better environment for the electric car to thrive.

With more than $2 billion in federal grants, matched by another $2 billion in private investment, the Obama administration was supporting electric cars from the mine to the garage.

Chemetall Foote Corp., which operates the only U.S. lithium mine, received $28 million to boost production at its plants in Nevada and North Carolina. Honeywell received $27 million to become the first domestic supplier of a conductive salt for lithium batteries. More than $1 billion was spent to open and expand battery factories, many of them in hard-luck towns across Michigan. Through a separate federal program, automakers received loans to retool their assembly lines.

Customers could receive a $7,500 tax credit for buying an electric car. The stimulus provided funding for 20,000 electric charging stations by 2013. In many cities, drivers could get a home charger for free.

Although electric cars would not make up for the generation-long loss of manufacturing jobs, at least not yet, it was novel to see companies creating jobs in the Rust Belt instead of outsourcing them.

In July, Johnson Controls opened the first U.S. factory to produce complete lithium-ion battery cells for electric vehicles. Compact Power is building a $300 million factory in Holland, Mich., to produce batteries for the Chevy Volt and the electric Ford Focus. A123 now supplies the luxury electric carmaker Fisker Automotive and the manufacturers of electric delivery trucks used by FedEx and Frito-Lay. "Quite simply, if we didn't get that grant, we wouldn't have built [the factory] in the U.S.," A123 spokesman Dan Borgasano said.

The battery grants have created and saved more than 1,800 jobs for assembly workers, toolmakers and engineers, according to a ProPublica analysis of stimulus project reports filed by the companies. That number doesn't include the workers who constructed the plants or those hired by the matching private investment the companies had to make to get the grants.

Killed again?

The problem: Consumers have been slow to embrace the electric car.

The price of the battery is still too high, and the price of gas is still too low, the Government Accountability Office warned in June 2009 before the grants were awarded. The starting price for the all-electric Nissan Leaf is $33,000, while the hybrid Volt sells for about $40,000 before tax credits — far more than many middle-class families can afford.

About 40 percent of drivers didn't have access to an outlet where they park their vehicles, the GAO noted.

"Although a mile driven on electricity is cheaper than one driven on gasoline," the National Research Council reported, "it will likely take several decades before the upfront costs decline enough to be offset by lifetime fuel savings."

Perhaps the biggest obstacle, though, was what the automobile represents in the American psyche: the freedom of the open road. While most people drive less than 40 miles per day, consumers want cars that they can also take on summer vacations — and they don't want to have to constantly worry about looking for a charging station.

The Leaf's range is just 73 miles, according to the official government rating, well below the much-advertised 100 miles.

By the end of 2011, fewer than 18,000 Leafs and Volts had been sold in the United States.

A report by congressional researchers last year concluded that the cost of batteries, anxiety over mileage range and more efficient internal combustion engines could make it difficult to achieve Obama's goal of a million electric vehicles by 2015. Even many in the industry say the target is unreachable.

While the $2.4 billion in stimulus money has increased battery manufacturing, the congressional report noted that United States might not be able to keep up in the long run. South Korea and China have announced plans to invest more than five times that amount over the next decade. Even A123 had to lay off 125 workers in November — though Borgasano says the company plans to rehire them all by June — because Fisker reduced orders.

Dick Moore, the mayor of Elkhart, had hoped the area known for its recreational-vehicle factories would one day be not just the "RV Capital of the World" but the "EV Capital of the World" as well.

Navistar International had received $39 million in stimulus money to build 400 electric delivery trucks in the first year. But by early 2011, it had hired about 40 employees and assembled only 78 vehicles.

Think had rallied into 2011 with plans to start production in Elkhart earlier than expected. But in April, assembly work suddenly stopped as the plant awaited parts from Europe.

In June, Think's parent company filed for bankruptcy. The decision left the Elkhart plant slouching toward extinction until the American subsidiary was purchased by a Russian entrepreneur who promised to restart production in early 2012.

But on Thursday, its battery maker, Ener1, also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, reporting that the demand for electric vehicles "did not develop as quickly as anticipated."

Elkhart's dream of becoming the EV capital?

Moore put it this way: "The fact that this hasn't moved very quickly, that doesn't bode well for that idea."

The future

The fate of the electric car depends greatly on whether sales take off soon.

There are other factors, such as the price of gas and whether Congress approves proposed standards requiring automakers to raise the average fuel economy of their vehicles to 55 miles per gallon by 2025.

The electric car has always struggled with a chicken-and-egg dilemma: Automakers have been reluctant to build electric cars without consumer demand. But consumers won't buy them until automakers develop cheaper, longer-range batteries.

One of the goals of the ongoing stimulus spending is to solve this problem. By 2015, the 30 battery and component factories will be able to produce 40 percent of the world's batteries, according to the administration.

The investments would help manufacturers increase the batteries' life from four years to 14 and cut their cost from $33,000 to $10,000, the administration said in a report on innovation. That would make the electric car more competitive.

Herrera noted that many people at the A123 factory believe they will never be able to afford the cars powered by the batteries they make. But, she says, "you never know."

"When the flat-screen TVs first came out, they were way expensive, and now they're reasonably priced," she said. "I think that's going to be the same thing with electric automobiles. This is a new product. It's going to take time."

This story was adapted from "Money Well Spent?: The Truth Behind the Trillion-Dollar Stimulus, the Biggest Economic Recovery Plan in History," published Tuesday by PublicAffairs.

Photo credit: CC Licensed by Tim Hurst

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Joe's cartoon archive, twitter ramblings and StumbleUpon page...

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While the two GOP frontrunners in Florida, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, both recognize human-caused climate change as a legitimate concern, no GOP candidate is sincerely addressing the critical climate and energy issues facing Florida, and the rest of the U.S. In fact, the GOP presidential field is largely avoiding energy issues altogether.

Granted, I am not so naive to expect any of the remaining GOP candidates to be barnstorming the lower 48 on biofueled-buses stumping on clean energy or climate change, but if the ultimate GOP presidential nominee hopes to have a shot in Florida, there are some key energy and climate issues that all Floridians really do care about — whether Gingrich, Romney or any of the other GOP hopefuls care to acknowledge them or not.

Offshore oil and gas
Long before the 2008 Republican Convention and the emergence of the "Drill, baby, drill" catchphrase, Republicans have urged the expansion of oil and gas development in just about every fossil fuel-rich corner of this country. But Florida is different. Because of the state's massive tourism industry, and the political and economic clout it brings with it, a two-decade-old ban on drilling in state waters remains in effect and extends out about 10 miles from the coast into the Gulf and three miles out into the Atlantic. And outside of the ban in state waters, federal law prohibits drilling within 125 miles of the Florida coast.

But geologists believe there are substantial oil and gas deposits in the Federal Outer Continental Shelf off of Florida’s western coast. And for this reason, bipartisan opposition to oil and gas exploration off the Florida coast is not the solid block it used to be.

But the 2010 BP oil spill tempered enthusiasm for drilling in Florida waters and public support for offshore oil drilling in Florida has waned in recent years. The recent uptick in opposition to offshore oil and gas development in Florida, spawned a ballot initiative to put the question of offshore oil drilling on the November 2012 ballot. Should the issue get on the ballot and pass, it would put a constitutional ban on drilling in state waters.

While this would not sit well with some Republicans, the new oil drilling trend in Cuban waters which could get within about 45 miles of Florida, doesn't sit well with virtually all Republicans, especially when a deepwater blowout like the one that spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 would send oil into the Straits of Florida and onto hundreds of miles of Florida beaches.

Clean energy & energy efficiency
Florida’s per capita residential electricity demand is among the highest in the country and the amount of petroleum-fired electricity generated in Florida is second to note. With a population of 18.5 million and climbing, energy demand will continue to tighten in the state, driving up the cost of electricity and just about everything else. Although energy efficiency has not really been part of the Florida lexicon to date, if efficiency is ignored for much longer, Florida will join California and the New England states in the uppermost tier of state electricity prices.

In terms of clean energy, just 2 percent of Florida's electricity generation comes from renewable sources, with the overwhelming majority of that coming from landfill methane capture and from the burning of wood/wood waste. But Florida's potential as a renewable energy powerhouse is staggering. The state's abundant solar, wave and tidal resource, combined with its untapped biogas and biofuel potential could be the basis of a clean energy boom in the state, given the right mix of policy drivers and political support. The City of Gainesville notwithstanding, Florida has fallen by the wayside in terms of policy support for renewable energy and moved into the minority of states without a renewable energy standard (RES).

If a national RES is ever passed by the federal government, which it certainly could even under Republican control, Florida is going to be way behind other states and will be forced to play catch-up during a time where national demand could temporarily drive the cost of renewables higher.

Drought and rising sea levels

The biggest elephant in the room when talking about energy and climate in Florida is the projected sea level rise given increased air and water temperatures. The Center for American Progress reports that almost half of Florida’s beaches, are already eroding enough to have an impact on existing development and recreation areas. That erosion already costs $100 million annually for beach nourishment projects, not to mention the threat it presents for real estate. According to an analysis by the American Security Project, real estate losses are projected to cost Floridians $11 billion by 2025, potentially doubling to $23 billion annually by 2050.

Rising sea levels also means salt water intrusion into inland waters, threatening to contaminate the state's already shaky freshwater supplies. And as of just this week, South Florida is officially in a drought. Again.

As I wrote at the outset, I don't expect climate and energy to be front and center of the political debate in Florida. But once this shooting match to see who can be the most conservative is over, someone is going to have some explaining to do to the millions of independent voters who ultimately control which candidate takes the state's 29 electoral votes.

Image credits: 1. Cartoon by Jeff Parker at Florida Today (courtesy of PoliticalCartoons.com);  2. Fire on Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig (U.S. Coast Guard); 3 Solar Panels (First Solar) ; 4. Map of predicted sea-level rise (EPA)

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