Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

Companies Learn the Value of Being a Step Ahead of the Law

cap-and-trade

In 2003, as the human role in warming the planet was being widely accepted, it was pretty obvious which way the wind was blowing on efforts to reduce carbon in the atmosphere. There would be regulation, sooner if not later, and businesses that trod with a large carbon footprint had to decide how to respond. Should they fight new rules, accept them as inevitable, maybe hedge their bets with a little greenwashing while mostly standing pat, or start adopting some of the likely new rules to prepare for the inevitable and perhaps even influence the regulatory outcome? A handful of businesses, ... Read More

A Salty Solution to Global Warming

There is no shortage of ideas bouncing around about what to do with our warming planet--switch to renewables, switch to plastic bags, construct space elevators in order to alter the atmosphere and block out the sun, or plug away as usual until the rapture. Recently, researchers experimented with another: injecting CO2 into highly salty groundwater. They found that, over time, the CO2 will dissolve in the briny water, potentially mitigating global warming. Briny patches of groundwater are found the world over and "are often relics of earlier hydrologic systems [that] have persisted for ... Read More

Climate Change: A Moment of Species Pride

The world is getting warmer, and we have to figure out what to do about it. By "we" I mean all of us humans: we are literally all in this together. The onset of our very own "anthropocene" geological era presents the biggest practical challenge that humanity has faced. How we respond to it will define our place in cosmic history: it is a golden opportunity. In 2010, Miller-McCune magazine published a remarkable piece of data visualization ("Tracking Climate Change") to try and help answer the question: who is responsible for climate change? A year on, and it's still the main topic of the ... Read More

Germany’s Road to Natural Gas Has Coal Detour

Germany's nuclear phase-out strikes either joy or fear into the hearts of environmentalists — joy over the end of nuclear power in a major industrial nation, or fear over the undeniable prospect of more coal-fired plants in central Europe. Some estimates claim Germany will add up to 40 million tons of carbon dioxide with (supposedly temporary) new fossil-fuel plants to replace its nuclear power — an increase "equivalent to the annual emissions of Slovakia," as Reuters put it not long ago. But the phase-out comes with a tricky statistic at the heart of the plan, a cap-and-trade rule that ... Read More

Teaching Sustainability Has Benefits for Big Business

Bill Thomas used to be a climate change skeptic, not believing that humans could have influenced the dramatic atmospheric shift, but two weeks in the woods — and chats with scientists — changed his mind. "I remember vividly that first day with Dr. Jess Parker; he showed us a chart of CO2 levels increasing about the time of the industrial revolution," says Thomas, who works for HSBC bank and participated in a 2007 Climate Champions training program. There, a personal epiphany led to a job title change — the former relationship manager for HSBC Technical Services is now group head of ... Read More

Americans Can Be Persuaded to Drive Less

While Australia is the model for changing driving behavior because it has led citizens to re-consider their “drive-first” mentality, there are American communities that have quietly benefited from soft transportation demand management. Portland, Ore., is the largest U.S. metropolitan area that has worked with the TravelSmart model. But it, and most other American municipalities, veered away from some seemingly expensive concepts, such as sending bus drivers and bicycle “doctors” to individual homes to reassure wavering citizens. After a four-city Federal Transit Administration pilot ... Read More

The Social Cost of Carbon

While federal climate legislation ground to a halt in July, the U.S. government began regulating carbon dioxide through the Environmental Protection Agency's mandate to uphold the Clean Air Act. CO2, a so-called greenhouse gas, was declared an "air pollutant," which therefore fell within the EPA's regulatory reach. Whether this has any meaningful impact turns on a little-known data point called the "social cost of carbon." It is, says economist Frank Ackerman, "the most important number you've never heard of." The social cost of carbon, or SCC, is the value in today's dollars of the ... Read More

Nature’s Cooling Albedo Disappearing Faster Than Thought

Those who reject the notion of climate change often note that there’s a level of prediction in the other side’s concerns, and they correlate prediction with speculation and ultimately conflate it with guessing. That’s not entirely fair, but there is an element of educated guessing going on in developing models that will accurately predict tomorrow’s climate. The assumption from naysayers is that when the models don’t perform flawlessly, that failure can only show that global warming isn’t happening. But a new study led by the University of Michigan’s Mark G. Flanner and funded ... Read More

Tracking Climate Change

Tracking Climate Change -- Carbon Footprint Graphic

As the international community tries to come to grips with climate change, the difficulties of reaching agreement on the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide are becoming ever more apparent. One sticking point involves the relative contribution of First and Third World countries to global warming. Developing nations have contended that industrialized countries caused climate change and ought to bear the brunt of CO2 regulation. The West points at exponential growth in China and India as a reason that regulation of carbon emissions must apply across the board. For atmospheric ... Read More

The Tree That Changed the World

The author of A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization, begins a series of articles on the world’s first energy crisis: peak wood. Part I: The Tree That Changed the World Part II: Wood and Civilization Part III: Peak Wood and the Bronze Age Part IV: Peak Wood Brings on the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Fossil Fuels Astronomers for the longest time have regarded Venus as the planet most resembling Earth. Having almost the exact size as Earth and being almost as close to the sun has led many to call it Earth’s twin. The clouds always covering the Venusian ... Read More