Coming clean about greenhouse gas emissions can make some companies squeamish. Because emissions are bad, businesses fear that talking about them might be, too. But a new study out of the University of California, Davis finds that by entering into the conversation voluntarily, companies can boost their bottom line. A study of 172 companies found that stock prices jumped, on average, a half a percent in the five days surrounding an emissions-related press release. While that change might not seem substantial, bundling all those little benefits together meant an extra $10 billion for the ... Read More
US, EU in Dogfight Over Airline Emissions
October 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
With the rest of the world's leaders repeatedly gridlocked in crafting a binding international climate change strategy, Europe has plowed ahead in tackling greenhouse gas emissions. The European Union designed its own emissions trading scheme, and starting Jan. 1, 2012, the piece targeting emissions from air travel is scheduled to go into effect. The Aviation Directive would slowly cap emissions on all flights landing and taking off from airports inside the EU. However, the system focuses not just on the emissions that occur within European air space, but on those associated with the entire ... Read More
Bipartisan Group Wants U.S. to Get Serious About Geoengineering
October 4, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Geoengineering is the somewhat Orwellian term for mankind intentionally changing the dynamics of the planet's natural processes using technology. We stress "intentionally" because once man mastered the plow and fire, geoengineering on a slow scale commenced; spurred by climate change, geoengineering ideas these days are both intentional and, based on geological time frames, instantaneous. On Oct. 4, the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Bipartisan Policy Center issued a report that called for the United States to seriously examine geoengineering as a "climate remediation" strategy. The ... Read More
Russian Gas and the Cost of Germany’s Energy Revolution
September 14, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Last week, in front of a crowd of journalists in Vyborg, Russia, Vladimir Putin sat at a desk and inaugurated a major new gas pipeline to Germany with a banal, 21st-century gesture: He clicked something on a computer screen. The Nord Stream pipeline is Russia's first direct gas link to Europe, and, by next year, it should bring enough gas to the EU to generate the energy "of 11 nuclear power plants," Putin boasted. It was a reference to German energy policy, but Angela Merkel wouldn't have smiled. When the Fukushima disaster pushed her to make the quick decision this summer to shutter ... Read More
Developing Smart Cars, Roads for a Greener Drive
August 12, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
If you're the kind of driver who over-accelerates between traffic signals and jerks to a stop on red, you're a prime candidate to learn eco-driving, the steady-as-you-go technique that can cut down on fuel consumption by more than 10 percent. Eco-driving means "reading" the traffic flow as far ahead as possible so that you can maintain a consistent speed, anticipate stops and avoid excessive braking and accelerating. It means acting instead of reacting. You shift up as soon as possible. You don't barrel toward the intersection and slam on the brakes. You slowly coast to a stop, saving gas ... Read More
Australians Have Learned to Drive Less
March 18, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
With turmoil raging near Middle Eastern oil fields and December’s Cancun climate summit failing to produce any binding agreement even though the Gulf of Mexico had suffered from the world’s worst offshore oil spill, perhaps it’s time to consider how America might honestly address its oil dependency and global warming issues. Transportation, not industry or commerce, is the prime factor in the nation’s consumption of petroleum and emission of greenhouse gases. American driving consumes over half of the nation’s daily burn of 19 million barrels of oil and produces 45 percent of the ... Read More
Americans Can Be Persuaded to Drive Less
March 18, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
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
February 15, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
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
Ten Ways the Feds Are Leading the Green Charge
September 14, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
President Obama issued an executive order last October requiring every government agency to spell out how it plans to "lead by example" in environmental sustainability. He wanted to hear about waste management and water use, smart meters in federal office buildings and alternative-fuel vehicles in public fleets. The Strategic Sustainability Performance Plans were finally due last week, and embedded in the dense documents — no one should print these things, even on recycled paper — are hundreds of small ideas. The relatively obscure Corporation for National and Community Service, for ... Read More
Clearing the Air on States’ Rights
August 20, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
When the Environmental Protection Agency concluded last December that greenhouse gases pose a danger to public health, the agency set itself on a path for the first time to regulate the emissions scientists blame for causing climate change. "I absolutely prefer that the Senate take action," EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said at the time, referring to everyone's favored fix to the problem: a comprehensive climate bill stamped by Congress. "And I'm hopeful that they will." But, well, that never happened. And it's hard to imagine now when it will. (Flash forward five months, and Jackson ... Read More
