Mercury pollution is next on the list of global health threats to face concentrated action with the goal of elimination.  According to Zero Mercury Working Group, yesterday the first significant steps toward a binding treaty to control mercury pollution were announced at a United Nations Environmental Program meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, in advance of negotiations that will take place in Stockholm next summer.

The global nature of mercury pollution lies in its ability to travel long distances from its point of emission through the food chain.  In fish it accumulates in its most toxic form, methylmercury.  Zero Mercury hopes to achieve a treaty by 2013 that promotes more sustainable alternatives to mercury in products and industrial processes, with the broad goal of addressing all controllable emissions of mercury in the environment.

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Community opposition, legal challenges, and financial uncertainty over future carbon costs are prompting companies to rethink their plans for coal.

Since the beginning of 2007, 95 proposed coal-fired power plants have been canceled or postponed in the United States—59 in 2007, 24 in 2008, and at least 12 in the first three months of 2009. This covers nearly half of the 200 or so U.S. coal-fired power plants that have been proposed for construction since 2000. The vast majority of the remaining proposals are essentially on hold, awaiting word on whether the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is going to impose limits on carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. With further legal challenges ahead and the regulation of CO₂ imminent, 2009 may very well witness the end of new coal-fired power plants in the United States.

An April 2007 Supreme Court ruling is proving to be a seminal decision. In Massachusetts v. EPA, the Court ruled that the Clean Air Act gives the agency authority to regulate CO₂ emissions and that the EPA must review whether such emissions pose a threat to public health or welfare. Complying with the Court order, new EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson submitted an endangerment finding to the White House in late March 2009 indicating that human health and welfare are indeed threatened by CO₂ emissions. This finding opens the door to regulating CO₂ emissions under the Clean Air Act. Such regulation would provide a backup option for curbing emissions if Congress fails to set limits on them through legislation.

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A new study shows that pollution from automobiles and coal-fired power plants is contributing to the melting of mountain snowpacks up to a month early, exacerbating water shortages and polluting streams in the arid West.

We’ve all seen it. That white fluffy blanket of snow that looked so nice after it fell a couple weeks back is no longer white and fluffy. It has been capped with a layer of dark sooty particulate matter, turning it from white to gray to black. Having grown up in the Boston area, this was the reality of virtually every snowstorm I can recall from my youth. But that dark, sooty particulate matter that builds up on the stale snow is not only an aesthetically unpleasing feature of urban landscapes in the winter, it happens in the North American snowscapes of the Rockies, the Sierra Nevadas and the Cascades - with far more serious consequences.

A peer-reviewed study conducted by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, is the first to explore changes to snowmelt caused by soot pollution at a regional level. The study, authored by Qian, Gustafson, Leung and Ghan, is scheduled to be published next month in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres.

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In early October, pollsters commissioned by the coal industry group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) interviewed 600 individuals nationwide about their position on coal. But pollsters did not seek a random survey, rather they sought the preferences of so-called “opinion elites” nationwide.

Opinion elites are defined by pollsters as “adults with $80,000 or more in household income and a four-year college degree or more and a professional or managerial job title or a business owner and a high degree of involvement in politics and policy matters.”

But why an elite survey? The elite survey methodology is something that was experimented with by the social sciences in the middle part of the twentieth century and pretty much abandoned soon thereafter.

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The Bush administration chalked up another in a growing list of environmentally ignorant midnight rulings by “clarifying” a rule that could allow the approval of several new coal-fired power plants.

Instead of decommissioning America’s fleet of coal-fired power plants and making concerted efforts to prevent the construction of any new ones, the United States Government is finding ways to make sure plenty more can be built. In a memo issued by EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson on Thursday, the Bush administration has “clarified” a rule prohibiting any federal agency from denying an operating permit to new or significantly remodeled power plants based on their carbon dioxide emissions.

Thursday’s ruling stems back to a 2007 case in Utah when the Sierra Club sued EPA because they granted an operating permit to a new coal-fired power plant without taking the new plant’s carbon dioxide emissions into account.

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Good news! Although it’s shocking that it took this long for a ruling that would limit CO2 emissions from new coal-fired power plants…

…Equally shocking is the fact that it took me since Thursday to come up with this very average cartoon to immortalize said ruling.

“The important thing is the change in timing of available water,” explained William Gustafson, an atmospheric scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and one of the study’s primary authors. In essence, there will be plenty of water in the early spring, when water availability is never a problem. But come late summer, rivers are losing their water much earlier than before.

But faster runoff also means less water for farming and residential use, less potential for hydroelectric energy, shorter rafting and skiing seasons and less-than stellar fishing conditions. For Rocky Mountain states like Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, the economic impact on the recreation industry alone, is reason alone to take this study’s findings seriously.

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But addressing the problem with real solutions is a political nightmare. Water politics in the West is already tenuous, add to the situation drivers that begin across state and international borders, and you are left with what seems like a virtually untangleable knot. You see, it just so happens that the changes needed in our infrastructure to clean up our automobiles, our factories, and our energy supply to mitigate the effects of rising amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, are the very same kinds of changes we need to reduce the amount of particulate emissions in the air that turns that snow black and melts it so hastily.

Image: 1. CC licensed by flickr user bethography; 2. National Park Service

Huh, maybe a clean energy future does lie ahead. The Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) ruled today that the EPA had no valid reason for refusing to limit from new coal-fired power plants the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming.

The board sided with the Sierra Club and found that since Massachusetts v EPA Supreme ruled that Carbon Dioxide is a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, new coal-fired power plants must implement Best Available Technology for controlling CO2.

What? The EPA cannot refuse to protect the environment? Awesome!

This decision means that all new and proposed coal plants nationwide must readdress their carbon dioxide emissions.

“Today’s decision opens the way for meaningful action to fight global warming and is a major step in bringing about a clean energy economy,” said Joanne Spalding, Sierra Club Senior Attorney who argued the case. “This is one more sign that we must begin repowering,  refueling and rebuilding America.”

The EAB shot down every lame Bush excuse for failing to regulate what is the largest source of greenhouse gases in the United States. This should make things easier for when Obama takes over - and am I the only person that wants that to happen…like now?

According to the Sierra Club, coal emits 30% of our nation’s global warming pollutants. And this was an issue, why? “Everyone has a role to play and it’s time that the coal industry did its part and started living up to its clean coal rhetoric,” Bruce Nilles, Director of the Sierra Club’s National Coal Campaign, went on to say.

Source: Sierra Club |  Image: Jan Tik on Flickr under Creative Commons

“The important thing is the change in timing of available water,” explained William Gustafson, an atmospheric scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and one of the study’s primary authors. In essence, there will be plenty of water in the early spring, when water availability is never a problem. But come late summer, rivers are losing their water much earlier than before.

But faster runoff also means less water for farming and residential use, less potential for hydroelectric energy, shorter rafting and skiing seasons and less-than stellar fishing conditions. For Rocky Mountain states like Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, the economic impact on the recreation industry alone, is reason alone to take this study’s findings seriously.

>>Sign up for email updates from Red, Green, and Blue

But addressing the problem with real solutions is a political nightmare. Water politics in the West is already tenuous, add to the situation drivers that begin across state and international borders, and you are left with what seems like a virtually untangleable knot. You see, it just so happens that the changes needed in our infrastructure to clean up our automobiles, our factories, and our energy supply to mitigate the effects of rising amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, are the very same kinds of changes we need to reduce the amount of particulate emissions in the air that turns that snow black and melts it so hastily.

Image: 1. CC licensed by flickr user bethography; 2. National Park Service

According to the saga, Coalfinger plans to cover the world in coal-fired power stations and destroy the climate, but the hero, Graverson Green is set upon stopping the super-villain with the help of his assistant Katrina Hurkane. Watch it:

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“Although this is an animation, it greatly relates to the world we live in today. The use of coal for energy is having an incredibly negative effect on the climate, and like Coalfinger, many energy companies around the world are forging ahead with plans for new coal-fired power stations despite the evidence of their impact. Green, on the other hand, reminds us that we must work together to stop dirty coal plants and fight for clean and renewable energy.

“The important thing is the change in timing of available water,” explained William Gustafson, an atmospheric scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and one of the study’s primary authors. In essence, there will be plenty of water in the early spring, when water availability is never a problem. But come late summer, rivers are losing their water much earlier than before.

But faster runoff also means less water for farming and residential use, less potential for hydroelectric energy, shorter rafting and skiing seasons and less-than stellar fishing conditions. For Rocky Mountain states like Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, the economic impact on the recreation industry alone, is reason alone to take this study’s findings seriously.

>>Sign up for email updates from Red, Green, and Blue

But addressing the problem with real solutions is a political nightmare. Water politics in the West is already tenuous, add to the situation drivers that begin across state and international borders, and you are left with what seems like a virtually untangleable knot. You see, it just so happens that the changes needed in our infrastructure to clean up our automobiles, our factories, and our energy supply to mitigate the effects of rising amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, are the very same kinds of changes we need to reduce the amount of particulate emissions in the air that turns that snow black and melts it so hastily.

Image: 1. CC licensed by flickr user bethography; 2. National Park Service

Ironically, on the same day, the InterAcademy Council announced a new report titled, “Lighting the Way: Toward a Sustainable Energy Future.” While that report didn’t include the peak oil news, it did emphasize that the world needs to start moving now to ensure both a dependable energy future and a climate that doesn’t tip dangerously into overdrive.

And here’s where the conundrum comes in: coal, the InterAcademy Council report acknowledged, is the most abundant fossil fuel we’ve got … but also the most potentially damaging. Coal-fired power plants, which are springing up in growing numbers around the globe, could help provide the energy safety net we need if the peak-oil analysis is true. But the emissions from coal-burning plants would only speed up today’s rising greenhouse gas levels.

So what’s the solution? Do we throw everything we’ve got at developing safe and cost-effective ways to capture and store the carbon from coal plants? Or do we “Just say no” to coal and invest like mad in renewables research and development? We need an answer in the near future apparently, but which will it be?

“The important thing is the change in timing of available water,” explained William Gustafson, an atmospheric scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and one of the study’s primary authors. In essence, there will be plenty of water in the early spring, when water availability is never a problem. But come late summer, rivers are losing their water much earlier than before.

But faster runoff also means less water for farming and residential use, less potential for hydroelectric energy, shorter rafting and skiing seasons and less-than stellar fishing conditions. For Rocky Mountain states like Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, the economic impact on the recreation industry alone, is reason alone to take this study’s findings seriously.

>>Sign up for email updates from Red, Green, and Blue

But addressing the problem with real solutions is a political nightmare. Water politics in the West is already tenuous, add to the situation drivers that begin across state and international borders, and you are left with what seems like a virtually untangleable knot. You see, it just so happens that the changes needed in our infrastructure to clean up our automobiles, our factories, and our energy supply to mitigate the effects of rising amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, are the very same kinds of changes we need to reduce the amount of particulate emissions in the air that turns that snow black and melts it so hastily.

Image: 1. CC licensed by flickr user bethography; 2. National Park Service