Green Options

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The EU issues an ultimatum to US airlines.

US airlines must pay for their carbon dioxide emissions or face a curb on flights to the European Union, the EU transport commissioner warned yesterday.

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Editor’s note: Welcome to “Tangled Up in Green,” Red, Green and Blue’s weekly debate over the hot issues in environmental politics. Each week, writers Ranjit Arab and Adam Bowman will “throw down the glove” on current events involving environmental policy, legislation and citizen action. Adam and Ranjit are both graduate students in journalism at the University of Kansas, and currently enrolled in Professor Simran Sethi’s “Media and the Environment” course.

Does the town of Holcomb, Kansas sound familiar?

I’m sure it does if you’ve read “In Cold Blood,” or seen the movies based on the book and its author Truman Capote.

In a perverted way that negative association has been somewhat of a godsend. People remember Holcomb; they immediately recall it as the place where a senseless and unspeakable crime was committed.

Unfortunately, it looks like Holcomb may be preparing for a sequel, featuring yet another heinous act. This time it involves the attempts of Sunflower Electric Corp.—along with several lawmakers—to force an expansion of the power company’s Holcomb facilities, which would include two hazardous coal-burning electric plants.

Pretty neat: a device called “Carbon Hero” uses satellite navigation data to calculate your personal, daily carbon footprint with almost no manual input required. Carbon Hero, which was a prize-winner in the 2007 European Satellite Navigation Competition, is the size of a key ring and sends your carbon data for display on a cellphone.

Princeton University’s new Sustainability Plan calls for the campus to reduce its carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

Under the plan, all new construction at Princeton will have to use half as much energy as is required under current building codes. The plan also aims to reduce campus car traffic by 10 percent by 2020.

“We feel that we have an obligation as an institution to create an environment where students, faculty and staff can see the institution trying out new technologies … or trying to change behavior,” said Mark Burstein, Princeton’s executive vice president.

Dr. Jeffrey Martin and William L. Kubic, Jr. have proposed a concept to synthesize gasoline from carbon dioxide emissions, and have dubbed their idea “Green Freedom.” “The idea is simple,” (a sure bet that it’s anything but) says Kenneth Chang in the New York Times:

Air would be blown over a liquid solution of potassium carbonate, which would absorb the carbon dioxide [which] would then be extracted and subjected to chemical reactions

[…]

Change your lightbulbs, buy local food, keep your tires properly inflated: all of us in the green publishing space, both online and off, promote such actions as ways for all of us to live greener lives, and, more specifically, to cut our carbon footprints. “Low-hanging fruit” approaches to personal sustainability appeal to us because of their simplicity: we don’t have to make major changes in our lives to feel like we’re making a difference. As we attempt to reach beyond the “green” audience to people who are still “testing the waters,” and who are intimidated by the notion that “going green” means making major sacrifices, tips provide a valuable introduction to lowering one’s personal impact.

Still, the “simple actions” approach to sustainability also runs the risk of becoming simplistic, and even moralistic. Many of us are probably guilty of looking aghast at someone when we find out they don’t recycle, or buy their produce from the neighborhood farmers’ market. “It’s so simple,” we tell ourselves. We feel justified, then, in judging others, perhaps harshly, for the actions they don’t take.

In the latest issue of The New Yorker (published today), writer Michael Specter takes a look at the “simple” actions not only taken by individuals and families, but also promoted by the business world to consumers. British supermarket chain Tesco, for instance, has announced it will look for an easy method for identifying the carbon footprint of the products it sells. Walkers crisps (potato chips) already carry such a label. These are steps forward, no doubt, in providing information that consumers want. But, as Specter points out, there’s nothing simple about determining the carbon footprint of a product:

In order to develop the label for Walkers, researchers had to calculate the amount of energy required to plant seeds for the ingredients (sunflower oil and potatoes), as well as to make the fertilizers and pesticides used on those potatoes. Next, they factored in the energy required for diesel tractors to collect the potatoes, then the effects of chopping, cleaning, storing, and bagging them. The packaging and printing processes also emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, as does the petroleum used to deliver those crisps to stores. Finally, the research team assessed the impact of throwing the empty bag in the trash, collecting the garbage in a truck, driving to a landfill, and burying them. In the end, the researchers—from the Carbon Trust—found that seventy-five grams of greenhouse gases are expended in the production of every individual-size bag of potato chips.

Got some bad news for all those countries trying to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol: aiming for carbon dioxide emissions reductions of 25, 50, even 75 percent in the coming decades ain’t gonna cut it.

The only way to stabilize Earth’s climate, according to new research, is to cut carbon emissions to zero … and to do it quick.

Climate […]

This advert has been making the rounds here in the UK for a few weeks now. A haunting song with haunting imagery.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/vKlC7iGzi-M" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Carbon emissions from transport, as a contributing factor to climate change, is a hugely complex subject. Yet we must continue to address it, look for solutions, if we are ever to tackle global warming.

Transport is too vast a topic to discuss as a whole. Instead, I want to just look at our behaviour on the roads. Can it ever be possible to curb this behaviour when we seemingly continue to believe that the car is the only way forward?

Japan backed the United States last month during the United Nations-led talks in Bali, opposing the European Union proposal for cutting emissions by 2012.  Japan however has helped redeem itself by pledging $10 billion over 5 years to help developing countries reduce carbon emissions.

The “Cool Earth Partnership” fund pledges $8 billion in assistance and $2 billion in grants, aid, and public assistance for clean energy.  Dispersal of funds will begin this year and is set […]

Citing the latest numbers from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Time Magazine reports that Texas has the distinction of being the state with the biggest carbon footprint in the Union.

Photo courtesy of Ealdgyth at Wikimedia Commons