planted city

Source: Cottage Country & The David Suzuki Foundation

Getting Around: ‘The Greener Way to Get There’ (Infographic)

More info here.

(Source: 1 Block Off the Grid)

From The New York Times:

IT’S a lot like one of those math problems that gave you fits in sixth grade: a salesman leaves home in Denver and drives his electric car to a meeting in Boulder. At the same time, a physicist driving the same model electric car sets out from her loft in Los Angeles, heading to an appointment near Anaheim.

For both, the traffic is light, and the cars consume an identical amount of battery power while traveling the same number of miles. Being purely electric, they emit zero tailpipe pollutants during their trips.

The test question: are their carbon footprints also equal?

The answer may be a surprise. According to a report that the Union of Concerned Scientists plans to release on Monday, there would be a considerable difference in the amount of greenhouse gases — primarily carbon dioxide — that result from charging the cars’ battery packs. By trapping heat, greenhouse gases contribute to climate change.

The advocacy group’s report, titled “State of Charge: Electric Vehicles’ Global Warming Emissions and Fuel Cost Savings Across the United States,” uses the electric power requirements of the Nissan Leaf as a basis for comparison. The Leaf, on sale in the United States for more than a year and the most widely available electric model from a major automaker, sets a logical baseline.

The California part of the story is upbeat: a hypothetical Los Angeles Leaf would be accountable for the release of an admirably low level of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, about the same as a gasoline car getting 79 miles per gallon. But the Denver car would cause as large a load of greenhouse gases to enter the atmosphere as some versions of the gasoline-powered Mazda 3, a compact sedan rated at 33 m.p.g. in combined city and highway driving by the Environmental Protection Agency. In simple terms, the effect of electric vehicles on the amount of greenhouse gases released into the environment can span a wide range, varying with the source of the electricity that charges them. California’s clean power makes the Leaf a hero; the regional mix of coal-dependent utilities serving Denver diminish the car’s benefits as a global-warming fighter.

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According to 2010 data from the United States Energy Information Administration, 45 percent of the country’s electricity is generated by burning coal, the dirtiest fuel. Natural gas, a much cleaner fuel, accounts for 24 percent of electricity production, a figure that is shifting rapidly with price swings. Nuclear plants generate 20 percent of the nation’s power, while wind, solar and geothermal sources provide 3 percent.

While the report puts hard numbers on the current situation, it also points out the need for fundamental changes.

“To prevent the worst consequences of global warming,” the report concludes, “the automotive industry must deliver viable alternatives to the oil-fueled internal-combustion engine — i.e., vehicles boasting zero or near-zero emissions.”

Check out the rest of the article here and a map of the GHGs associated with driving an electric car in specific regions of the U.S. here.

(Infographic credit: Union of Concerned Scientists)

From Business Green:

Businesses have been urged to accelerate their environmental footprinting strategies to include emerging economies, after new research by the Carbon Trust revealed young people in China could hold the key to unlocking mass demand for greener products.

The survey of 2,800 young people across six countries carried out by TNS found 83 per cent of 18-25 year-olds in China would be more loyal to a brand if they could see it was reducing its carbon footprint. In contrast, just 57 per cent of US respondents and 55 per cent of young people in the UK made the same claim.

Globally, 78 per cent of young people said they want their favourite brands to reduce their carbon footprint, but again those in Chinese showed the highest demand for emission reductions with 88 per cent calling on firms to cut their footprint.

South Africa came in second place with 86 per cent of respondents calling on blue chips to reduce their impact, followed by Brazil at 84 per cent. Again the US and UK lagged far behind with only two thirds of respondents demanding more action from big brands.

Check out the rest of the article here. You can also check out an infographic of the study here.

(Image credit: Carbon Trust) 

From The Montreal Gazette:

Environment Minister Pierre Arcand announced the official adoption of Quebec’s cap-and-trade system to fight climate change Thursday – three days after what Arcand called the federal government’s “utterly regrettable” announcement that Canada will withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol.

Arcand said if industrialized countries abandon Kyoto – the lone legally binding international agreement on greenhouse gas reduction – it becomes all the more crucial for states and provinces to take legislative action to reduce emissions quickly.

Arcand said the cap-and-trade system will be good not just for the climate, but for the economy.

“With the adoption of this legislation, Quebec is positioning itself at the starting line, beside California,” he told a news conference Thursday at Montreal’s Biosphere.

“We are participating in the emergence of an economic tool that will transform one of the most significant environmental challenges of the 21st century into a real trampoline toward a green, prosperous and sustainable economy.”

States and provinces, through endeavours like the Western Climate Initiative, are acting independently to create a linked North American market for carbon credits, which aim to reduce emissions, encourage investment in clean energy technologies, create green jobs and improve public health.

California became the first state to adopt a cap-and-trade program in October, and like Quebec’s system, it comes into full effect in January 2013.

Check out the rest of the article here. 

(Photo credit: Globe & Mail)

From Business Green:

China looks set to impose a direct tax on its largest greenhouse gas emitters by 2015, according to reports in state media.

Proposals for an environmental tax are being reviewed by the Ministry of Finance and are expected to come into force before the end of the 2011-2015 five-year plan, the state news agency Xinhua reported today, citing government sources.

…

The prospective tax is the latest in a series of measures from the Chinese government designed to curb the country’s soaring greenhouse gas emissions, which oil giant BP recently estimated made up a quarter of the world’s total in 2010.

Most notably, the country’s latest five year plan includes targets to reduce carbon intensity, the amount of CO2 produced per unit of GDP, by 17 per cent from 2011 to 2015.

To ensure the target is met the government has launched wide-ranging incentives to drive investment in low carbon energy, introduced tough new fuel and energy efficiency standards, and piloted carbon trading mechanisms in several provinces.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: Urban Age)

Climate Change: US Carbon Emissions Down 7% in 4 Years 

From Link TV:

With US carbon emissions down 7% in four years and bigger drops coming, the United States may emerge as a global leader in cutting carbon and stabilizing climate.

Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute, tells Earth Focus that new forces including life style and demographic changes are reducing the use of both coal and oil in the United States. He expects that carbon emissions could decline by as much as 20% in the United States by 2020.

Climate Change: 200 Years of Global Warming in 2 Minutes

From YouTube:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration produced this video showing the unique nature of the modern spike in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. 

The New York Times’ Andrew Revkin looks at the trend and its implications here.

From The Guardian:

China’s light bulb moment – a bright idea hovering over its collective head – is a desperately needed glimmer of hope in a world that appears unable to resist its headlong charge into climate darkness.

The commitment by the world’s workshop to end the manufacture of wasteful incandescent light bulbs comes on the same day as a record rise in greenhouse gas emissions was revealed, putting global warming ahead of the worst-case scenarios envisaged by the world’s scientists. The economy may seem to be barely flickering in the west, but globally it is on full beam.

While switching to compact fluorescent bulbs – 75% more efficient than incandescents – has become unremarkable in some developed nations, the significance of China’s move should not be underestimated. Almost 20% of global electricity is used for lighting and the pollution it causes is equivalent to half of all the cars on the world’s roads. And we should be hoping for more light in the world in the future. In India alone, 400 million people live without electricity, condemned to darkness when the sun sets.

With China churning out billions of efficient bulbs, costs will fall further. That means it will be possible to cut carbon emissions from lighting around the world – perhaps by as much as half – without denying the most basic of amenities to the world’s poor.

Lighting is one of the more visible ways that increased energy efficiency can be delivered. Despite being by far the cheapest way of tackling climate change – often paying for itself in months – efficiency measures are too often put in the shade by shinier, more attractive energy technologies.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: Reuters)

‘Groundbreaking data tracks carbon emissions back to their source’

From The Guardian:

For the purposes of the Kyoto treaty, a nation’s carbon footprint is considered to be a sum of all the greenhouse gas released within its borders. But as many people – myself included – have been pointing out for years, that approach ignores all the laptops, leggings, lampshades and other goods that rich countries import from China and elsewhere.

If we want any chance of a fair global climate deal, the now-familiar argument goes, we need to rethink the way we measure emissions to allocate some of the carbon pouring out of Chinese, Indian and Mexican factories and power plants to the countries importing good from those countries.

The new scientific paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, points out that this argument – though persuasive – tells only half of the story. If you want to understand how carbon footprints are affected by international trade flows, the paper argues, you need to consider trade not only in gadgets and garments but also in fossil fuels themselves. After all, though country X might import a television that was made in country Y, it’s quite possible that country Y in turn imported some of the coal, oil or gas consumed by the television factory from country Z.

Of course, there’s nothing revelatory in the idea that fossil fuels are traded between nations. We all know that, say, Saudi Arabia produces much of the world’s oil. But what the academics behind the new data have done is a remarkable feat of number crunching: they’ve tracked the carbon flows of virtually the whole world, from the countries extracting the oil, gas and coal via the countries in which it’s burned to the countries that ultimately consume the goods and services all that energy is used to create.

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All of which will appeal to climate data enthusiasts, but is the study actually important? I think it is – not so much because it has any obvious practical applications, but because the data helps reminds campaigners, consumers and policymakers alike that the climate-change problem is ultimately about fossil fuel coming out of the ground. That sounds an obvious thing to say but it’s a point often forgotten in all the discussions about clean energy or national emissions cuts – both of which are necessary but not sufficient to meet the challenge of leaving most of the world’s hydrocarbons in the ground.

Check out the rest of the article and an accompanying “Extraction to Consumption” chart that shows the source of the fuels used to support the lifestyles in each country here.