Posts

Arctic Leaf

Should we use ethical thinking to respond to harm caused by oil’s boom and bust periods?

/in , , , , /by

Many years ago, I wrote a piece for the Denver Post. At the time, I was the dean of the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado. The column appeared just after the earthquake that devastated part of the Marina in San Francisco and was preceded, I believe, by a series of tornadoes in Tornado Alley in the Midwest. At the time, I expressed my concern that Congress was rushing to approve legislation that would aid individuals and communities that were negatively affected by both traumas. While I was in favor of helping them, I wondered out loud in the piece, “Why is it so easy for our leaders to immediately respond to people and communities where there is a reasonable probability that terrible events like earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding will occur relatively frequently or with some certainty over time?” Put another way, community development and home buying or renting are most often conscious choices by individuals, groups and institutions. If they can choose where to live and/or develop, and if they know in advance that their choice is risky because of geology or climate, except for emergency support, should extensive public assistance be provided without too much discussion or analysis in the form of subsidies, insurance, tax breaks (an imputed subsidy) — particularly when it’s so hard to maintain social welfare and education initiatives for the poor who have few choices?

texas2Policy polarization is as bad as political or ideological polarization and complex questions of policy deserve more than an either/or dialogue, particularly when the pool of funds, public, nonprofit or private resources is limited, and should require efficient and equitable choices. It may well be that living in risky areas is the only choice of some households, given income or job constraints. But clearly, many of the folks living in hurricane-prone areas along the East Coast (e.g., Hilton Head) or in earthquake-susceptible areas like the Marina in San Francisco, are not among the poor or very poor. Developers, who read relevant government maps and study models, also know that higher tides and flooding, likely related to climate change, are increasingly possible along America’s coast lines. Yet development still goes on and builders make profits, and in the end the public often pays when calamities happen.

Now, what does all this have to do with ethics, gasoline and alternative replacement fuels? I have been intrigued with the recent spate of articles concerning the fact that the decline of gas prices (increasing over the past two weeks, at least) has benefited certain vulnerable, low-income people and has harmed others. As important, perhaps, the decline has made community leaders and residents in areas subject to the recent oil boom worried about the impact of price reductions on the tax base, new development and maintaining services. Most are clearly more sensitive than they have been to the effect of oil boom and bust periods.

Clearly, the least advantaged among us have secured what amounts to a personal income and household budget boost from the lower costs of gasoline. It is likely that their jobs and quality of life prospects have increased simultaneously. They can search for a job farther from their home, they can visit relatives who do not live in their community more easily and affordably, they might even be able to take a vacation using their car. But other low- and, indeed, moderate-income folks have suffered either because current or anticipated cutbacks in oil production, for example, in the Texas shale area will cost or will soon cost many of them their jobs and because their communities have had to cut back on needed often promised services. An oil producer, local to the Texas shale area, recently told Financial Times: “We are stacking rigs and laying people off every day. Everyone is.”

Questions whether the current increase in oil prices is a preface to the future or are just a part of resource instability are now being argued in the media by would-be experts. But the ethical questions concerning winners and losers, as well as possible public support options and company behavior, are and will remain pervasive. They are just as difficult to answer now as they were years ago and will likely still be difficult to answer years from now.

“While the town’s oil workers [and their communities (my addition)] count themselves as victims of the slump in crude prices, they in part contributed to their own downfall,” the author of the Financial Times piece wrote. Visions of permanent, high-paying jobs drew many employees to oil-boom areas and visions of higher taxes and sustained economic growth converted town leaders to boosters for speculative spending and oil-related development — often without attention to reserves and debt.

Estimates of profits, technological inventions, such as fracking, and the high price of oil and gas just a few years ago generated producer behavior in seeking leases and installing drilling rigs.

Sorry to drop a name, but if you buy into Rawlsian ethics (and if you don’t, let’s discuss), a country’s real greatness is defined by how it treats the least among us. In this context, the oil companies deserve little sympathy. They are long-time recipients of significant direct and indirect or imputed public subsidies. Production is still rising, and their bottom line, in light of the choices they have to cut back spending, will likely remain strong.

The ethical issues, as noted earlier, are trickier for employees and towns. To some extent, employees were captured by iterative boom town publicity, employments ads, “drill, baby, drill” talk out of Washington, and reports of comparatively high income levels in oil production areas. Over America’s history, household mobility has probably raised more incomes and provided more quality of life choices to those involved than any existing public policy.

Clearly, many people who had choices because of income and family structure to begin with were motivated to move to the oil shale areas. If they chose to move and their decisions were wrong, to what extent is the larger community or the nation responsible to provide support, apart from advice? It’s a tough question, given budgetary constraints and the increased numbers of low-income folks in the nation, some of whom had no choice concerning jobs but to move to boom communities or to stay in place. Similarly, if the cities and towns involved saw oil production as their ticket to a glorious future, and if they were wrong or they didn’t hedge the bet, does management weaknesses and local boosterism merit more than sympathy for the human condition and the lack of perfection in our leaders? Again, these are tough questions because real people are involved. Many Midwestern, Southwestern, and Western areas have become ghost towns or towns that once dreamed and are now more off-the-road tourist attractions of what used to be viable communities.

Let’s go back to the future. Maybe just maybe some of these global ethical issues could be reduced if the oil industry itself assumed some responsibility for social and community problems during “bust” times. Not just a reserve fund or diverse investments and products to help the company ride out long busts, but a fund to help communities they have “rigged (excuse the play on words)” and their residents ride out the down economic tide, and for employees to relocate if they want to. Probably a bad idea, but think about it! Companies get federal help, even in boom times, even when most analysts of right and left say it’s unnecessary. What’s wrong with a relatively small payback? Values based capitalism!

Perhaps ethical issues could be lessened if the federal government and oil companies could be convinced to move toward open fuel markets. Gas prices seem to be on the rise. One way to hold them down and provide low- and moderate-income workers a break is to convert gasoline stations to fuel stations. Given the lower prices of alternative fuels, competition, in this instance, would sustain at least part of the income benefits that consumers, including low- and moderate-income consumers, have had when gas was priced at low levels. Competition might also help maintain the economy of some shale areas that, for example, produce natural gas and have, or can have, site blenders for ethanol.

As I said earlier, basic ethical problems related to resource distribution, whether related to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes or oil economic boom and bust cycles are difficult to resolve easily. Assigning fault between public, private sectors and individuals is a complicated task, made more complicated because of numerous exogenous variables that are not readily influenced in the short term (e.g., climate change or tension in the Middle East) at least by institutional, group or human actions, as well as a lack of data concerning cause and effect relationships and the power of special interest groups. We probably are condemned to the noted political scientist Charles Lindblom’s description of policymaking as muddling through to decisions. After consulting many companies and working with citizen groups and individuals over the years, I would add that the muddling process applies in varying degrees to them also. It’s the American way and has its advantages, particularly when we are uncertain about alternative strategies. Indeed, often it has better outcomes than decisions by fiat. Many times, it helps generate consensus during decision making processes and about decisions. Importantly, it also many times increases involvement of disenfranchised constituencies. But we can try to do better muddles!

Fuel Freedom Staff

2014 was the warmest year in recorded history

/in , /by

There were pockets of pure hotness in the United States in 2014. California, for instance, endured an unprecedented drought, worsened by the warmest year in the state since 1934.

Although the United States, overall, had just its 34th-warmest year on record, the rest of the world suffered much more: As climate scientists had been predicting for much of the year, 2014 was the hottest year around the globe since records began being kept in 1880.

As USA Today reported:

The global temperature from 2014 broke the previous record warmest years of 2005 and 2010 …

Two separate data sets of global temperature — from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — confirmed the record. Another data set released last week by the Japan Meteorological Agency also found 2014 was the planet’s warmest.

The average temperature for 2014 was 58.24 degrees globally, 1.24 degrees above the 20th-century average, NOAA said.

(California’s average was 61.5 degrees. Alaska, Nevada and Arizona also had their warmest years on record. Earlier this month, it was announced that Anchorage had exactly zero days of below-zero weather in 2014.)

More USA Today:

“It just shows that human emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, are taking over the Earth’s climate system,” [University of Arizona atmospheric scientist Jonathan] Overpeck said. “The data are clear: The Earth is warming, and humans are causing the bulk of this warming.”

Nine of the 10 warmest years on Earth have now occurred in the 21st century, the data show.

The warming trend was driven by ocean temperatures moreso than land temperatures, which alarms scientists, since there wasn’t even a heat-producing El Nino event.

As The Washington Post reported:

Ocean temperatures were more than 1 F above average, NOAA said. They warmed to a new record even in the absence of an El Niño event, a naturally occurring cycle of ocean heating in the tropical Pacific.

“This is the first year since 1997 that the record warmest year was not an El Niño year at the beginning of the year, because the last three have been,” Gavin Schmidt, who directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told the Post’s Chris Mooney.

Fuel Freedom Staff

Obama aims to cut methane emissions 45 percent

/in , , /by

President Obama’s latest effort to mitigate the effects of climate change will be to crack down on methane leakage from oil and gas wells, The New York Times reported.

The EPA will announce new regulations this week aimed at reducing methane emissions by 45 percent by 2025, compared with 2012 levels. Final rules will be set by 2016, the newspaper reported, citing anonymous sources.

Obama, stymied by Republican opposition that stands to become more solidified now that the party controls the Senate as well as the House, has increasingly turned to executive action, skirting Congress, to deal with climate change. The administration says the Clean Air Act gives it the green light to issue such mandates.

Methane, the primary component of natural gas, sometimes escapes from oil and gas wells, in addition to pipelines. Although the gas accounts for only 9 percent of overall greenhouse-gas emissions, it’s 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, another GHG that accounts for the majority of emissions.

The Natural Resources Defense Council applauded the proposed regulations, but the oil and gas industry said they’re unnecessary, since they’re already motivated to capture methane instead of allowing it to escape into the atmosphere. If it’s captured, it can be burned in power plants to generate electricity, making it a cleaner alternative to coal. Methane can also be used to fuel cars and trucks, as compressed (CNG) or liquefied (LNG) natural gas. It can also be converted into two types of inexpensive liquid alcohol fuels, ethanol or methanol.

Howard Feldman, director of regulatory affairs for the American Petroleum Institute, said:

“We don’t need regulation to capture it, because we are incentivized to do it. We want to bring it to market.”

That market would grow if the infrastructure for transportation fuels were expanded, creating more of an incentive to capture methane. The price of natural gas stood at $12.68 per million metric British Thermal Units (MmBTU) in June 2008, only to crash to $1.95 by April 2012. Last month the average was $3.43 at the Henry Hub terminal in Louisiana. Profit margins are still so low that oil drillers flare off much of it.

Fuel Freedom Staff

Author: Dieting is a terrible metaphor for reducing emissions

/in , /by

Ahead of the U.N. climate conference in Paris later this year, there will be a lot of talk about how nations should apportion the burden of reducing carbon emissions. The richer, more industrialized nations have a lot of ideas about what poorer, still-developing nations should do to grow their economies without polluting the atmosphere too much.

Invariably, we might hear the term “carbon diet” come up, with its emphasis on personal sacrifice and willpower.

It’s a counterproductive metaphor, writes Lisa Margonelli, author of Oil on the Brain: Petroleum’s Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank.

In a post for Slate, as part of its “Future Tense” initiative, Margonelli writes that the “dieting” analogy is unfair to those developing countries, particularly when the richer ones are dictating the terms:

Most of the world does not need a carbon diet. Three-quarters of the global population uses just 10 percent of the world’s energy, 1 billion people lack access to electricity, and 3 billion cook their food over dung, wood, and charcoal, leading to millions of early deaths. These people are energy starved—and they need a feast, not a diet. People in Angola, Bangladesh, and Cameroon, for example, use about 250 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, while people in the U.S. use 12,246.

She goes on to argue that people in developing countries deserve the chance at economic prosperity, so rich nations should promote innovations to serve the surging energy needs in a cleaner way.

For example:

Consider air conditioning. The world uses a trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity for AC right now, and with urbanization, greater wealth, and warming, it’s projected that amount will increase tenfold by 2050, far outpacing zero-carbon electricity generation. The issue is not whether people in developing countries “should” have air conditioning—what virtue is there in dying in your apartment during a heat wave? It’s how to get it to them. AC is a crucial part of building the knowledge economy employment that will eventually bring down carbon emissions because it increases the productivity of people and computers. Without AC there would be no grand economies in Hong Kong, Atlanta, or Bangalore.

The main reason the “diet” metaphor fails is that it suggests that the world’s problems can be solved by individual willpower.

The real issue with the carbon diet is that it suggests that we can deal with climate change as easily as we might switch to gluten-free pasta and beer, via willpower and careful substitution, when what we’ll really need is some kind of revolution in our thinking and technology.

On top of all that, most diets don’t work in the long term anyway. Which some people, sadly, are about to find out, a few weeks into their well-intentioned New Year’s resolutions.

(Photo: Yao ethnic minority women cook dinner on a smoke-spewing stove in Longji, China, in 2010. Credit: CHEN WS, for Shutterstock.com)

Fuel Freedom Staff

Anchorage had zero days below zero in 2014, a first

/in , /by

Climate experts are worried about a strange trend in the largest U.S. state: During all of 2014, the city of Anchorage, Alaska, did not see a day when the temperature fell below zero degrees Fahrenheit. That’s the first time in recorded history that’s happened.

As The Washington Post notes, the last time the mercury fell into negative digits was Dec. 26, 2013. Since then, the low has been above zero every day except one, Feb. 11, 2014, when it was exactly zero.

The Los Angeles Times says that in 2012, Anchorage had 32 days when the low temperature was below zero. In 2013 there were 14 such days.

Seven other cities in Alaska had record-warm years as well.

That doesn’t mean it was hot, per se. The average temperature in Anchorage during 2014 was 40.6 degrees, which to Southern Californians would feel like the next Ice Age. But that threshold was far above last year’s average temperature of 37 degrees.

The Times reported:

“These are definitely red flags that are very consistent with climate change,” said Chris Krenz, senior scientist at Oceana, an international conservation group. “These are anomalies … that show our climate system is off-kilter.”

Fuel Freedom Staff

Pope to publish rare encyclical on climate change

/in , /by

Pope Francis will issue an encyclical, a message to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, urging them to take action on climate change, The Guardian reported.

The publication will follow the pontiff’s trip in March to the city of Tacloban, in the Philippines, which was devastated in 2012 by the super Typhoon Haiyan. Months later, the pope will address the UN General Assembly in New York.

The Guardian reports:

The reason for such frenetic activity, says Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, chancellor of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, is the pope’s wish to directly influence next year’s crucial UN climate meeting in Paris, when countries will try to conclude 20 years of fraught negotiations with a universal commitment to reduce emissions.

Francis has addressed global inequality and environmental depredation in recent months, arguing that economies needn’t harm the ecosystem to provide opportunity for citizens. In October, he spoke at the World Meeting of Popular Movements in Rome:

“An economic system centered on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it. … The monopolizing of lands, deforestation, the appropriation of water, inadequate agro-toxics are some of the evils that tear man from the land of his birth. Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great cataclysms we witness.”

Slate.com science writer Phil Plait said it’s “wise” for the pope to issue his statement on climate change after visiting Tacloban:

… people there are still recovering from the incredible power of super Typhoon Haiyan … and it’s known that cyclones like that one are becoming more powerful due to global warming. It will present a strong and clear message of the urgency of this issue.

I have no doubt that the deniers in Congress (and in the usual venues) will bloviate, creating sound and fury over this. But what they are doing is flailing, trying to delay the inevitable.

Fuel Freedom Staff

Lima Accord is first deal to require all nations to cut emissions

/in , /by

Negotiators at the U.N. climate conference in Lima, Peru, emerged after 36 straight hours of talks with a deal that has received mixed reviews.

On its face, the Lima Accord is a breakthrough: For the first time, the world’s nations, rich and poor, have signed on to an agreement requiring everyone to cut their own greenhouse-gas emissions. Yet some critics say the deal is so diluted that there are few penalties, beyond international scorn, for nations failing to come up with a plan.

According to The New York Times‘ Coral Davenport:

The strength of the accord — the fact that it includes pledges by every country to put forward a plan to reduce emissions at home — is also its greatest weakness. In order to get every country to agree to the deal, including the United States, the world’s largest historic carbon polluter, the Lima Accord does not include legally binding requirements that countries cut their emissions by any particular amount.

“If a country doesn’t submit a plan, there will be no punishment, no fine, no black U.N. helicopters showing up,” said Jennifer Morgan, an expert on climate negotiations with the World Resources Institute, a research organization.

Under the draft of the final agreement, each of the 190 nations has until March 31 to enact its own domestic plan to reduce carbon emissions. Countries that miss the deadline will have until June. Collectively, the plans, known as the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, will be the foundation for an agreement to be signed at a Paris U.N. conference next year.

Many questions about the deal persist: Megan Rowling of Reuters has a story about how rich countries will help poorer ones deal with the cost of reducing emissions without stunting their own economies.

And The Guardian notes that language in the deal mentioning specific targets was amended:

… there will be few obligations to provide details and no review to compare each nation’s pledges – as had been demanded by the European Union – after China and other emerging nations refused. The text says INDCs “may include” details such as base years and yearly targets, far weaker than a former draft that said nations “shall provide” such details.

But as AP’s Karl Ritter reported, many were still hopeful and optimistic about what had been accomplished:

“As a text it’s not perfect, but it includes the positions of the parties,” said Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, who was the conference chairman and had spent most of the day meeting separately with delegations.

 

Fuel Freedom Staff

Idea emerges from Lima conference: Zero emissions by 2050

/in , /by

An idea is gathering momentum among several governments: Reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050.

As AP reports from the United Nations climate talks going on in Lima, Peru, this week:

… in a historic first, dozens of governments now embrace her prescription. The global climate pact set for adoption in Paris next year should phase out greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, says the London-based environmental lawyer.

“In your lifetime, emissions have to go to zero. That’s a message people understand,” said the Pakistani-born [Farhana] Yamin, who has been instrumental in getting that ambitious, some say crucial, goal into drafts being discussed at U.N. talks in Lima this week.

As The Guardian notes, the ambitious goal is spelled out in a policy document titled “ADP 2-7 agenda item 3 Elements for a draft negotiating text.”

The guidelines being hashed out in Lima could make their way onto the agenda for the next big U.N. climate conference, in Paris next year. The Guardian writes:

While a year seems like a long time, it’s not in the world of UN climate talks.

As one Australian observer pointed out, there are only six weeks of negotiating time on the UN’s schedule between now and Paris.

But if language such as “full decarbonization by 2050” were to become a reality, it basically defines an end point for the fossil fuel energy industry as we know it.

Fuel Freedom Staff

Some experts say China really is serious about climate change

/in , /by

The reaction to President Obama’s climate-change deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping, among congressional Republicans, was swift and negative. The prevailing sentiment is that China didn’t give up as much in the bargain as the U.S., and that China isn’t likely to live up to its end of the agreement anyway.

But Mother Jones magazine quotes some experts on U.S.-China relations, and they say China is indeed serious about cutting greenhouse-gas emissions.

MJ’s James West writes:

So I asked experts on US-China relations to explain why this deal was so attractive to the leaders of two countries that have historically locked horns over everything from human rights to lingerie imports. Here’s their explanation of why China really does want to want to act on climate change, and why the bargain makes sense for President Barack Obama, as well:

China has to act on air pollution. If it doesn’t, the country risks political instability. Top Republicans have slammed the US-China deal as ineffective and one-sided. “China won’t have to reduce anything,” complained Sen. Jim Inhofe (Okla.) in a statement, adding that China’s promises were “hollow and not believable.”

But the assumption that China won’t try to live up to its end of the bargain misses the powerful domestic and global incentives for China to take action. The first, and most pressing, is visible in China’s appalling air quality. President Xi Jinping needs to act now, says Jerome A. Cohen, a leading Chinese law expert at New York University. Why? Because “the environment—not only the climate—is the most serious domestic challenge he confronts.”

Fuel Freedom Staff

U.S., China reach deal to cut emissions, but there are questions

/in , /by

President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a milestone climate-change agreement in Beijing today, under which both countries would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to meet certain targets.

A major goal of the agreement, which still needs to be formalized, is to spur other nations to reduce their own carbon output.

But the deal already is coming under criticism: As The New York Times reports, at least one climate-change expert says China could do more on its end; the country is vowing to cut off peak emissions only at “around” the year 2030.

Republicans in Congress were swift to criticize the deal. As The Hill notes, House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio issued a statement denouncing the deal as potentially harmful to the cheap energy that middle-class families rely on.

“This announcement is yet another sign that the president intends to double down on his job-crushing policies no matter how devastating the impact for America’s heartland and the country as a whole,” the statement said.