“For the first 40-something years of the Clean Air Act of 1963, the Environmental Protection Agency could show progress toward cleaner air — even if it was sometimes slow or uneven. The agency issued regulations for sources of the pollutants it was set up to tackle, like diesel car tailpipes and coal power plants, and over time, the air quality improved.
But the trend changed abruptly about five years ago, when pollution from wildfires, heat, and drought — trends worsened by climate change — began to overtake these gains.”
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“Ozone and fine particulate matter affect the entire body in all stages of life. They impact the young and old, pregnant people and the developing fetus, and can cause and worsen respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, and worse cognition. Their sources can be a bit different, though. Burning oil, gas, and coal, whether at the tailpipe or power plant, releases pollutants that cause both ozone and particulate matter. Ozone also is more likely to form in hot weather, while wildfires tend to be much worse for particulate matter.”
“it’s not just the Atlantic; oceans all around the world are seeing stunningly high average temperatures right now. On the other side of the globe, the Pacific Ocean surface is also heating up as it enters the El Niño phase of its cycle. Together, these phenomena are poised to push the planet’s temperature to new highs.”
“The European researchers behind the new study do an in-depth analysis of how much land and sea area it would take to implement the Net Zero by 2050 roadmap devised by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2021. The IEA outlines an energy transition trajectory to cut global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels to zero by 2050. The Net Zero goal is to keep the increase of global average temperature below the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above the late 19th-century baseline. “This calls for nothing less than a complete transformation of how we produce, transport and consume energy,” notes the IEA.
The Scientific Reports study finds that implementing the IEA’s roadmap requires that much of the world’s agricultural and wild lands be sacrificed to produce energy. Biofuels, both liquid and solid, are especially egregious destroyers of the landscape. On the other hand, the energy source that spares the most land is nuclear power. In addition, electricity produced by fission reactors is not intermittent the way that vastly more land-hungry solar and wind power are.”
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“wind and solar projects occupying massive amounts of land increasingly get NIMBY pushback from disgruntled neighbors. Energy analyst Robert Bryce, author of A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations (2020), has compiled a database showing that nearly 500 renewable energy projects have been rejected or restricted over the past decade.
The European researchers calculated that nuclear power plants sited on just 20,800 square km (8,000 square miles) of land could supply all of the carbon-free electricity demanded in 2050. That’s less land than is occupied by the state of Vermont.
Over at Tech Xplore, study co-author and energy conversion researcher at Norwegian University of Science and Technology Jonas Kristiansen Nøland points out that “the spatial extent of nuclear power is 99.7% less than onshore wind power—in other words, 350 times less use of land area.” He adds, “An energy transition based on nuclear power alone would save 99.75% of environmental encroachments in 2050. We could even remove most of the current environmental footprint we have already caused.””
“The Biden administration is announcing a climate rule that would require most fossil fuel power plants to slash their greenhouse gas pollution 90 percent between 2035 and 2040 — or shut down.”
“State Rep. Jeff Hoverson didn’t want anyone getting in the way of using fossil fuels in North Dakota. Not the United Nations. Not international nonprofits. Certainly not the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. So he made a law to stop them. In March, the North Dakota legislature passed a bill that Hoverson co-authored with a state senator. It’s short, sweet and to the point: “A climate control-related regulation of an international organization, either directly through the organization or indirectly through law or regulation, is not enforceable on this state.”
Hoverson told me he isn’t sure what that will mean the next time the federal government wants to sign a climate treaty. Frankly, he’d prefer the feds not have that kind of power, anyway. But while his law stands out for the scope of its ambitions, it’s not exactly an outlier in its spirit. Across the country, bills pushing back against climate policy have been a trend this legislative session, with multiple states proposing — and passing — laws that would undermine efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Some of the laws aim to support the oil and gas industry in various ways, such as a bill in Indiana that amends clean-energy incentives for utility companies to include building natural-gas power plants as long as they can be said to displace coal, or another in Kentucky barring conservation easements in the state from infringing on the activities of oil and gas industries. Others have taken the form of preemption laws, barring cities and other regional governments from setting more stringent environmental regulations than the surrounding state. This includes laws preventing bans on gas stoves and requiring municipalities to include natural gas as a source of clean energy, as well as bills that would prevent them from banning the use of certain refrigerants before the federal government does.
None of this is exactly good Earth Day tidings. And, more importantly, this legislation highlights what a mess American climate policy is. These laws pit different branches of government against each other, roll back some environmental protections established in legislation of years’ past and, in the case of North Dakota, create laws to prevent things that are not currently happening and likely wouldn’t be enforceable if they did. Meanwhile, plenty of other states are introducing and often passing bills that do directly or indirectly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The result is that predicting the near-term future of environmental regulation in this country is really hard. And that, economists say, can end up making it more expensive — and less appealing — to reduce emissions.”
“To qualify for a credit, an E.V.’s “final assembly” must occur in North America. If that sounds complicated for a consumer to figure out, the Department of Energy recommends searching individual cars by Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) “to identify a vehicle’s build plant and country of manufacture.” Past that, at least 40 percent of the battery’s minerals and 50 percent of its components must be sourced either from the U.S. or a country with which it has a “free trade agreement.” Those numbers will go up each year until they reach 80 percent and 100 percent, respectively. Meeting only one percentage requirement and not the other qualifies for half of the credit ($3,750).
The rules were written to exclude China. But China owns or controls the overwhelming majority of materials used in E.V. batteries. Not to mention, the European Union also lacks a free trade agreement with the United States. According to the Energy Department, only 14 vehicle models qualify for the full credit: five from Chevrolet, four from Tesla, two from Ford, and one each from Cadillac, Chrysler, and Lincoln. Some others qualify for half-credits due to sourcing requirements—for example, Ford manufactures the Mustang Mach-E’s battery in Poland—but American companies noticeably account for every single qualifying vehicle.
That’s a great deal for those four companies—Ford, General Motors, Stellantis, and Tesla—but a bad deal for everybody else. Numerous foreign automakers sell E.V.s in the U.S. but are disqualified from tax credits unless they build the vehicles domestically using parts sourced in a very specific way. Meanwhile, two versions of the Chevrolet Bolt—which uses outdated battery technology and was briefly taken off the market in 2021 when its batteries were catching on fire—qualify for the full tax credit under the new rules. So even though a consumer might find the similarly priced Nissan Leaf to be more reliable, a $7,500 tax credit might sway them away from it. That would be a boon to Chevrolet’s bottom line as it still gets to charge full price for the car, and the U.S. government will reimburse the purchaser at tax time.”
“There are two primary types of fossil fuel subsidies. Production subsidies offset the costs for companies involved in energy production. Consumption subsidies make the final product less expensive for consumers.”
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“Fuel subsidies lower the cost of energy and incentivize consumption: When the price of fuel is artificially lowered, more people will drive and fewer will turn to carpooling and other commuting alternatives. After all, there’s a reason that demand for electric cars surges whenever oil prices spike.”
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“A decade ago, a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research estimated that ending all fossil fuel subsidies would decrease global consumption by 29 billion gallons annually.
Last year’s Glasgow Climate Pact was the first time an international climate agreement included a call to revoke subsidies. Even then, it came after significant opposition from developing countries such as India and China.
The IPCC report notes that ending subsidies can hurt “the most economically vulnerable.” But the IEA noted that “subsidies are rarely well-targeted to protect vulnerable groups and tend to benefit better-off segments of the population.” It recommends prioritizing “structural changes” over short-term relief, while the IPCC report argues that if you want to help poor people pay for transportation, it may make more sense to redistribute the revenue you saved by cutting the subsidies.”
“What is the supposed looming climate catastrophe? Exceeding the threshold in which global average temperature rises 1.5 degrees Celsius above the 1850-1900 baseline. That threshold was established in the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement, which aims to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.” In order to have a 50/50 chance of achieving that goal, the new report calculates humanity must cut its greenhouse gas emissions (chiefly carbon dioxide) basically in half by 2030. Secretary-General Guterres asserted that the report shows that “the 1.5-degree limit is achievable.”
Will humanity inevitably suffer a catastrophic fall if we go over the supposed 1.5 degrees Celsius climatic cliff in 2030? No”
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“It is the case that the world’s average temperature is about 1.1 degrees Celsius higher than it was between 1850 and 1900. The bulk of that temperature increase largely stems from burning fossil fuels that have loaded up the atmosphere with extra heat-trapping carbon dioxide. Atmospheric carbon dioxide stood at about 285 parts per million around 1850, rising to about 316 ppm by 1958 and is now at 420 ppm.
The report states that the evidence has “strengthened” that man-made global warming is responsible for observed changes in extremes such as heat waves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones. Recent studies do show that the intensity, frequency, and duration of heat waves have increased since the 1950s and that the frequency of heavy rainfall events has also risen. On the other hand, clear evidence for changes in global trends in meteorological drought is lacking and global tropical cyclone accumulated energy (a measure of the combined duration and strength of tropical cyclones) is not increasing.”
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“the report does not put a dollar figure on the losses that are projected to result from unmitigated climate change. Perhaps, as the report asserts, that is because “cost-benefit analysis remains limited in its ability to represent all avoided damages from climate change (high confidence).” Still, the report does note, “Even without accounting for all the benefits of avoiding potential damages the global economic and social benefit of limiting global warming to 2°C exceeds the cost of mitigation in most of the assessed literature (medium confidence).” A discreet footnote observes, “The evidence is too limited to make a similar robust conclusion for limiting warming to 1.5°C.” So the costs of trying to keep temperatures from increasing by 1.5 degrees Celsius might be greater than the benefits?”