Iowa Global Warming

The climate talks in Denmark produced serious talk among top carbon emitters about doing something, but little action that will directly affect Iowa, observers here say.

What happens next could affect everything from Iowa weather to how much the state’s residents pay for electricity.

Iowans who watched the Copenhagen Accord take shape from the ground in Denmark found important symbolism in President Barack Obama’s steps to move the United States into the middle of the discussions. They also point to real meat in an agreement of nations to spend $100 billion a year by 2020 for aid to poor countries and to countries facing the biggest climate-related effects.

But the agreement contained no hard targets for reducing heat-trapping greenhouse gases or specific emissions-reducing measures.

“It’s a beginning,” said Andrew Snow of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, a nonprofit group. “It’s a very positive thing considering ourselves and others were worried they wouldn’t reach a deal at all.”

Read the rest of the story here.

Long before he became president, Barack Obama had a hankering for the TGV and other fast trains. “I am always jealous about European trains,” he told an audience during a visit to Strasbourg last spring. “And I said to myself: why can’t we have high-speed rail?”

Well, maybe America can, although the full flowering of the rail renaissance is unlikely to get under way while Obama is still in the White House. With an initial infusion of $8bn, set aside under the spring’s economic stimulus plan, the Obama administration is embarking on the most ambitious expansion of passenger rail in 50 years, with the construction or upgrade of up to 10 routes from California through the midwest to Florida.

Apart from California, none of the other routes envisaged would meet international standards for high-speed trains. But rail advocates say Obama has still taken an important first step towards the transformation of US rail.

Read the rest of the article here.

Budget provision, if approved by Senate, will increase federal allocations for rail to $12 billion in this year alone.

Yesterday, the U.S. House passed its housing and transportation bill, which will provide funds for fiscal year 2010. Approved mostly by members of the majority Democratic party, the bill would allocate $4 billion to high-speed rail programs — if the Senate’s version, likely to be considered after the August recess, includes the same provision. If a planned infrastructure bank is authorized by the Congress later this year, $2 billion of the included funds would be shifted there and could be devoted to non-rail projects, though that prospect appears unlikely at this time.

In the President’s Budget, released earlier this year, Mr. Obama asked the Congress to devote $1 billion for the next five years for high-speed rail, in addition to the $8 billion already marked for the program under the stimulus bill. The House’s decision to increase that number to $4 billion is a direct reaction to the huge response from states and the private sphere for stimulus-based federal rail grants. The FRA revealed that forty states had applied for more than $103 billion.

Iowa Congressman Tom Latham (R) attempted to block the inclusion of so much money for rail, arguing that the government shouldn’t embark on what he argued would be a $100 billion endeavor. Yet his amendment was put down by a vote of 136-284, with 40 Republicans voting against his measure — compared to the only 16 members of the GOP voting for the bill as a whole. This indicates strong bipartisan support in Congress for high-speed rail investment and bodes well for similar action in the more conservative Senate.

Get more of the story here.

L’AQUILA, Italy — The world’s major industrial nations and newly emerging powers failed to agree Wednesday on specific cuts in heat-trapping gases by 2050, undercutting an effort to build a global consensus to fight climate change, according to people following the talks.

Group of 8As President Obama arrived for three days of meetings, negotiators for the world’s 17 leading polluters dropped a proposal to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by mid-century, and emissions from the most advanced economies by 80 percent. But both the G-8 and the developing countries agreed to set a goal of stopping world temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.

The discussion of climate change was among the top priorities of world leaders as they gathered here for the annual summit meeting of the Group of 8 powers. Mr. Obama invited counterparts from China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and others to join the G-8 here on Thursday for a parallel “Major Economies Forum” representing the producers of 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. But since President Hu Jintao of China abruptly left Italy to deal with unrest at home, the chances of making further progress seemed to evaporate.

Read the rest of the article here.

In October 1977, this magazine ran a cover story on the promising field of renewable energy. From today’s vantage point, the article is noteworthy mainly for how uncannily its description of the country’s energy crisis and possible solutions applies to the crisis we’re in now.

The article took as its starting point the national debate that had arisen over a 29-year-old physicist named Amory Lovins, who had come to prominence a year earlier, when he published an essay in Foreign Affairs called “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?” Lovins argued that the country had arrived at an important crossroads and could take one of two paths. The first, supported by U.S. policy at the time, promised a future of steadily increasing reliance on dirty fossil fuels and nuclear fission, and it carried serious environmental risks. At a time before Al Gore was even in Congress, Lovins noted: “The commitment to a long-term coal economy many times the scale of today’s makes the doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration early in the next century virtually unavoidable, with the prospect then or soon thereafter of substantial and perhaps irreversible changes in global climate.” He dubbed this “the hard path.”

The alternative, which Lovins called “the soft path,” favored “benign” sources of renewable power like wind and the sun, along with a heightened commitment to meeting energy demands through conservation and efficiency. Such a heterodox blend of clean technologies, Lovins argued, would bring a host of salutary effects: a healthier environment, an end to our dependence on Middle East oil, a diminished likelihood of future wars over energy, and the foundation of a vibrant new economy.

Read the rest of The Atlantic article here.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama’s new fuel and emission standards for cars and trucks will save billions of barrels of oil but are expected to cost consumers an extra $1,300 per vehicle by the time the plan is complete in 2016. Obama on Tuesday planned to announce the first-ever national emissions limits for vehicles, as well as require an overall or industry average fuel efficiency standard at 35.5 miles per gallon.

Carol Browner, the White House energy and climate director, publicly confirmed the new initiative in appearances on morning network news shows, calling it a “truly historic” occasion and saying tougher standards are “long overdue.”

The plan also would effectively end a feud between automakers and statehouses over emission standards _ with the states coming out on top but the automakers getting the single national standard they’ve been seeking and more time to make the changes.

Read the rest of the story here.

Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu pledged 93 million dollars for wind energy research and development Wednesday during his visit to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. Chu emphasized that this move would facilitate the president’s goal of switching ten percent of the nation’s electricity sources to renewable sources by 2012. 

The funding is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. 26 billion of the 100 billion dollars available for clean energy funding has been allocated since February and it is hoped that this amount will grow to 70 percent by Labor Day. Chu also pledged 100 million dollars to the laboratory for building upgrades to its biorefinery. 

Because of the state of the economy, the secretary also promised to speed up the loan-making process so that projects can begin faster. In the past, it has taken up to four years for loans to be approved, but Chu stressed that the economy cannot wait that long. “We want to launch projects quickly and logically that will provide enduring value,” he said.

To read more, go here

In their editorial today, the Des Moines Register calls for the Iowa Legislature to provide funding for the passenger rail project. They write, “The Iowa Legislature should get on board with a down payment before it shuts down for the year.”

The editorial explains that much of the country and President Obama are pushing for an investment in rail. It highlights an Amtrak study that states that a line connecting Chicago and Dubuque and connecting Chicago, the Quad Cities and Iowa City would be beneficial for both Illinois and Iowa. The editorial states that Illinois has signed on to the project and that Iowa should follow suit.

To read the editorial in full, go here

What a day! This morning, as I was getting ready to leave for President Obama’s Earth Day speech in Newton (I managed to get a White House Press pass!), I got a message from Kevin Brubaker, ELPC’s Deputy Director, that my friend Juliana was in the Register with a guest opinion on rail service. You can find it here: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090422/OPINION04/904220339/1038/OPINION. If you like it, please log into the Register site and leave a comment!

After giving a celebratory ‘five’ to my co-worker Kerri, I took my Mapquest (yes, Mapquest) off the printer and headed out for the event. At Trinity Structural Towers, the component manufacturer that’s helping to revive the economy in Newton, I got stuck in the press line and wasn’t sure I’d make it in… and so was Brad Ehrlich of WHO, who I know from earlier interviews. So I felt a little better. He’s a good guy, and we had a few laughs while waiting for our credentials. After the Secret Service cleared us, I was in. Wow.

A little less nervous than waiting in the press line, there was still a touch of incredulity while I set up our small digital camcorder and tripod on the press riser just a few yards to the left of the stage. The stage whose podium had the Presidential seal. Pretty heady stuff.

Our camcorder is much, much smaller than all the TV station cameras on the platform, and I think the press people looked at me with both a touch of skepticism and envy. ‘New Media’, was the look they had… I just smiled and set up the shot. Hey, we’re the Iowa Global Warming Campaign, we get access!

Once I was ready there was time to kill, and everyone in the ‘room’ (room being the size of a small warehouse) was checking each other out. As you could tell from my ‘tweets’, about half of the audience were employees, right up front and center. The rest were a mix of VIPs, including Agriculture Secretary Vilsack, Congressman Boswell, Gov. Culver, state legislators and other officials, and of course the press. A lot of faces I recognized, and a few that recognized me – and we’re all looking at each other and waiting for something big. An Earth Day speech from a new President who knows Iowa and who understands the importance of clean energy. An Earth Day speech that matters.

And it didn’t disappoint. One line from the speech could sum up where we are and where we have to go: “the choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy. The choice we face is between prosperity and decline”. And that’s where we are. So, what else was said, where are we going, where is this President trying to lead us? The rest of the speech is instructive, and it’s also inspiring.

Highlights? A ‘green light’ for an entirely new initiative to harvest energy from our oceans. Not just from offshore wind projects, but also tidal energy. There’s a huge opportunity to power our coastal areas, and I’m optimistic about the leadership stake that was announced here today. Another, and very crucial, announcement today: a ‘full court press’ on energy efficiency. We simply have to move on EE, and move quickly. It’s the first place we reduce greenhouse gases, and it’s the beginning of a trajectory that takes us into the future. And it was good to hear our new President say so.

One more key in the speech is modern transportation. That means more efficient vehicles; and it means passenger rail. We’ve been working on it here in Iowa for months, and President Obama stated very clearly that we have to make it a priority. I wasn’t the only one who noticed, either: the Register’s Twitter feed exploded with comments in favor of connecting to the Midwest Regional Rail Network – and I got a call from KCCI-TV asking for comment. It’s their top story of the night, and will be on in just a few minutes. If you get a chance, watch – I’m there representing your excitement and passion for transportation that works for us as well as the planet.

To watch the whole speech, visit our Mogulus channel at: http://www.mogulus.com/igwc. And if you haven’t yet, take action to make rail a reality for Iowa. Click here: http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/fund_iowa_rail

Happy Earth Day!

Andrew